18 Sep 2012

More protests erupt over anti-Islam video

6:03 am on 18 September 2012

Fresh protests are taking place around the Muslim world over an amateur anti-Islam video produced in the United States.

At least one protester was killed in violent clashes in Pakistan and thousands attended an angry rally in the Philippines city of Marawi on Monday.

Weapons were fired and police cars torched in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

The leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah has said the US faces "very dangerous" repercussions if it allows the full video to be released, the BBC reports.

In a rare public appearance, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah told a rally in the capital Beirut that the world did not understand the "breadth of the humiliation" caused by the "worst attack ever on Islam".

More than a dozen people have died since 11 September in protests sparked by the appearance on Youtube of a trailer for the obscure, poorly made film, titled Innocence of Muslims.

Youtube told the BBC it would not remove the trailer as it was within its guidelines but it had restricted access to the clip in countries where its content was illegal "such as India and Indonesia as well as in Libya and Egypt".

Thousands of people were on the streets of Beirut, waving flags and chanting, "America, hear us - don't insult our Prophet".

Sheikh Nasrallah, the influential leader of Lebanon's Shia Muslim militant group, earlier called for a week of protests - not only against American embassies, but also to press Muslim governments to express their own anger to the US.

Two protesters were killed in Pakistan on Monday as violent demonstrations were reported in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and the country's biggest city, Karachi.

On 11 September and attack on an American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, killed ambassador Chris Stevens and three US officials dead, while attack on US embassy in Cairo sees flag torn down and Islamist banner hoisted.

Protesters broke into a US embassy compound in Sanaa, Yemen on 13 September, while the following day protesters storm US embassy complex in Tunis.