Violence rises in Muslim protest

BEIRUT, Lebanon - A Muslim protest over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad turned into a rampage in Beirut on Sunday, as outrage over the drawings spread across continents and widened the rift between Islam and the West. At least one person reportedly died and about 200 were detained, officials said.

Muslim clerics denounced the violence, with some wading into the mobs trying to stop them. Copenhagen ordered Danes to leave the country or stay indoors in the second day of attacks on its diplomatic outposts in the Middle East.

A day after violent protests in neighboring Syria, protesters in the Lebanese capital torched the Danish Embassy, clashed with police and stoned a church -- the most violent reaction yet to 12 cartoons lampooning the prophet that first appeared in a Danish newspaper and were reprinted in other media this month.

Thirty people were injured, half of them members of the security forces, officials said, making it the most violent in a string of demonstrations across the Muslim world. All the injuries were from beatings and stones.

The violence in Beirut started when thousands of Muslims gathered near the Danish Embassy, which is in the Christian area of Ashrafieh. A small group of demonstrators set fire to the embassy, overturned cars and broke the windows of a Maronite Catholic church. Lebanese forces used tear gas and water cannons to beat back the crowds.

The event quickly took on ugly sectarian undertones in a capital scarred by Lebanon's bloody, 15-year civil war. Christian militants sent text messages to cell phones that read, ``Launch the Christian nation of Lebanon. It is never going to end unless you prepare your weapons.'' Muslims, meanwhile, rolled out their prayer carpets on the streets of the mostly Christian neighborhood in an act viewed as a provocation.

The Lebanese government called an emergency Cabinet meeting Sunday night, while both Shiite and Sunni Muslim leaders condemned the violence. Senior Shiite cleric Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah issued a religious order banning flag burnings and attacks on embassies, and urged Muslims to show their outrage by joining the boycott of Danish exports.