Pakistani police opened fire on anti-US demonstrators who brandished placards of Osama bin Laden and shouted "Death to America" in several cities yesterday to protest against US-led strikes on Afghanistan.
Chants of "Bush is a terrorist" also echoed through the streets in several major cities on the morning after the bombing in neighboring Afghanistan.
A pall of smoke hung over the western city of Quetta as police battled thousands of pro-Taliban demonstrators who set ablaze two cinemas, several shops, a bank, a truck and an office of Pakistan's Central Investigations Agency.
PHOTO: AP
Police fired into the air to disperse unruly crowds in the city center and used teargas and batons in another part of Quetta, which lies close to Afghanistan's southern border and the stronghold of Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
The demonstrators fired from rooftops and at least 10 people were hurt, included one hit by a bullet, witnesses said.
Protesters burnt tires and hurled stones at security forces, witnesses said.
Police also fired teargas to break up several protests in the northwestern city of Peshawar, near the Afghan border, where angry students and some Afghan refugees tried to demonstrate against the attacks that pounded most Afghan cities with bombs and missiles.
Students tried to block a road in one part of the city.
In another, police fired teargas to force several hundred protesters back into a mosque where they had gathered.
Up the Khyber Pass in Landi Kotal, eight kilometers from the Afghan border crossing at Torkham, local militia opened fire to control about 5,000 Pashtun tribesmen burning an effigy of US President George W. Bush. Three protesters were injured.
The crowd chanted "Long Live the Taliban" and threw stones at the militiamen.
In the volatile port city of Karachi, pro-Taliban protesters blocked streets leading to the main business center and angry crowds burnt tires and threw stones at passing vehicles along Bunder Road, a main artery in the southern part of town.
"All markets along Bunder Road are closed and many youths chanting anti-US slogans are forcing shopkeepers to close down their shops," said a photographer at the scene.
Armored personnel carriers with mounted machine guns were parked opposite the US consulate in Karachi. Hundreds of police and paramilitary rangers were deployed at key installations.
"Requisitioned vehicles have been parked across the roads leading to the US consulate and other offices and we are not allowing anyone to cross the barbed wire barricades," one policeman on duty said.
Security forces in other cities were also on high alert, with key installations heavily guarded and police and paramilitary forces stationed around diplomatic compounds and other sensitive areas, witnesses said.
One police official said security had been further tightened at airports, ports, railway stations, power stations and government offices.
In the capital Islamabad, UN staff were asked to stay at home and not go to their offices.
About 1,000 protesters, some armed with sticks or swords and chanting Islamic slogans, marched to the capital's American Center chanting anti-US and pro-Taliban slogans.
Police in riot gear surrounded the protesters from the capital's International Islamic University, keeping them from reaching the building in central Islamabad which has been the target of previous anti-American violence.
"If helping poor Afghanistan is terrorism, then we are all terrorists," one student shouted.
Another student said: "America should distinguish between jihad [holy war] and terrorism."
Security forces in Karachi were braced for expected anti-American protests near the central Empress Market later in the afternoon, while one company of soldiers had been positioned at the airport, a security official said.
In Quetta, hundreds of anti-riot police with helmets, shields and batons cordoned off some intersections.
Many shops were shuttered and foreign reporters were locked inside their hotels.
"It's difficult to say how many demonstrators are out there -- you have maybe 4,000 in one place and 1,200 in another and so on," a police superintendent said.
Some protesters carried placards denouncing Pakistan's military leader General Pervez Musharraf, saying: "Musharraf is a dog" -- considered to be a major insult in the Muslim world.
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