Three people were killed and scores injured in a third consecutive day of violent protests in Pakistan over the publication of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.
A crowd of more than 70,000 people in the north-western city of Peshawar burned businesses and attacked police, who hit back with teargas and batons.
One of the three people killed was a young boy, shot in the head. A Pakistani security official told the Reuters news agency it was unclear whether police or protesters had fired the bullet.
A Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant and cinemas were among the buildings set on fire.
Fighting also flared up in the eastern city of Lahore for a second day as at least 1,500 students staged an unannounced rally outside Punjab University, surprising police. Paramilitary forces were deployed to help restore order.
Demonstrations erupted in several Muslim countries after some European newspapers reprinted caricatures of the prophet that were first published in Denmark in September.
Western embassies were ransacked and national flags were burned of the countries whose newspapers had carried the cartoons.
A new front in the row over the images opened up yesterday when a German newspaper published a cartoon depicting the Iranian football team as suicide bombers.
In Russia, prosecutors today opened an investigation after the Gorodskiye Vesti newspaper, in Volgograd, published a cartoon of Jesus, Moses, Buddha and Mohammed watching television.
The illustration, accompanying an article entitled "Racists can't be in the government", showed two groups of people on the television screen about to start a fight. A caption under the religious figures read: "We did not teach you that."
The editor, Tatyana Kaminskaya, told the Associated Press the caricature could not have caused offence, and said none of the city's religious communities had complained. She accused the local branch of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party of stirring up the scandal.
