Multan (Pakistan): Protests in Pakistan against the caricatures of Prophet Mohammad have turned violent this week. Five people have died in riots, and Western businesses have been vandalised and burned.
Police have arrested 125 protesters for violating a ban on rallies in eastern Pakistan and put a radical Islamist leader under house detention, amid fears of more deadly demonstrations on Friday.
Police were ordered to restrict the movement of all religious leaders who might address any rallies and round up activists "who could be any threat to law and order," a senior police official said in Lahore.
In Multan, another city in Punjab province, about 300 police personnel swooped down on the protesters, who gathered on Friday morning at a traffic circle, chanting, "we are slaves of the Prophet," and trampling on a Danish flag, police said.
Protesters shouted slogans - "Death to Musharraf" - against Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, as they were bundled into two police buses.
In Karachi, police fired tear gas and swung batons to disperse about 2,000 protesters, many wielding sticks, who blocked the main highway into the southern city, said Alim Jafari, a Karachi police official.
The road was cleared and some 30 protesters were detained, he added.
The cartoons first appeared in a Danish newspaper in September and have since been condemned as blasphemous by the Muslim world.
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