Anti-Charlie Hebdo protests held in Pakistan
Police fire water cannon and tear gas outside French consulate in Karachi, as rally against cartoon turns violent.
Protesters have clashed with police in Pakistan’s port city of Karachi, as they took to the streets to condemn the latest publication of cartoons by French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.
Security forces fired water cannon and tear gas at stone-throwing protesters outside the French consulate on Friday, during an angry demonstration denouncing cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad.
Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder, reporting from Islamabad, said that a photographer working with the French news agency, AFP, was shot and wounded in the clashes.
Another four people were injured and were receiving hospital treatment, our correspodent said.
The Jamaat-e-Islami religious party, which organised the protest, said it was also planning nationwide rallies against the depictions by the French satirical weekly.
Depictions of the Prophet Muhammad are forbidden in Islam, and many in Muslim-majority Pakistan view the cartoons as blasphemous.
The rallies come a day after country’s parliament condemned the cartoons, regarded by many Muslims as offensive.
In addition to protests held by religious parties, lawyers in central Punjab and northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces have vowed to boycott court proceedings to show their displeasure over the sketches.
The magazine published a “survivors” issue earlier this week featuring an image of the Prophet Muhammad weeping, which sold out on Wednesday before more copies of an eventual print run of five million hit newsstands.