Beirut Mob Burns Danish Mission Over Cartoons

February 6, 2006 extract New York Times

Beirut Mob Burns Danish Mission Over Cartoons

By KATHERINE ZOEPF and HASSAN M. FATTAH

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Feb. 5 — Muslims angry over Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad clashed with Lebanese security forces setting a building housing the Danish Mission on fire and attacking a nearby church...in the predominantly Christian Achrafieh section of East Beirut...An early morning march through downtown Beirut soon exploded into violence, when a breakaway crowd surged toward a high-rise building that houses the Austrian and Danish Missions, chanting obscene anti-Danish slogans in Arabic and vandalizing cars, office buildings and a Maronite Catholic church nearby. Other protesters burned Danish flags and flags bearing images of the cross...

Islamists also attacked police officers with stones and set fire to several fire engines..On Saturday, Muslims set fire to the Danish and Swedish Missions in Damascus, Syria. (in Lebanon) 21 members of the country's internal security forces had been injured, and a source in the state security service, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to provide the information, said that 174 people had been arrested and that most of them were not Lebanese. Lebanese Muslim leaders quickly condemned the attacks and appealed for calm. Lebanon's grand mufti, Muhammad Rashid Kabbani, denounced the violence, saying there were infiltrators among the protesters trying to "harm the stability of Lebanon." On Sunday night, several Lebanese Christian political parties, including the Phalangists, the Aounists and the Lebanese Forces, held an unusual counterdemonstration near the Maronite church that was damaged during Muslim riots... many Lebanese also spoke of unity, the memory of the 15-year sectarian civil war still fresh in many minds...

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