Pakistan stepped up security in its capital yesterday and detained three Muslim clerics who organised anti-American demonstrations. Four people, including a 13-year-old boy, died in new violence near Quetta.
The crackdown followed a riot on Monday in Quetta, a pro-Taliban centre, where protesters burned cars, cinemas, a police station and several UN offices.
The protest yesterday in the nearby small town of Kuchlak was the most violent in Pakistan since the start of the US bombing campaign in Afghanistan.
Religious extremists object to President Pervez Musharraf's support of the international anti-terrorism coalition.
Despite large, sometimes raucous protests in some cities near the Afghan border, most of Pakistan has been quiet.
"In an Islamic society, there is no room for extremism and violence against any other religion or group," President Musharraf said yesterday, according to the Associated Press of Pakistan. He said support of his government now was part of "supreme national interests".
Security forces placed sandbags around police positions at key government installations in the capital yesterday and military vehicles with machine guns were seen patrolling major streets. Four people were shot and killed when up to 400 baton-wielding Afghan refugees attacked a police station in Kuchlak, authorities said. Some of the protesters had guns, and police fired back in self defence, said Mr Shoaib Suddel, a police inspector.
One of the victims was identified by doctors at the hospital in Quetta as 13-year-old Hamid Ullah. The police superintendent in Quetta, Mr Abid Ali, said the refugees first attacked a bank and post office in Kuchlak. They turned to the police station when officers tried to break them up. Mr Ali said 75 people were arrested.
In the eastern city of Lahore several hundred pro-Taliban demonstrators stoned police, blocked roads and chanted slogans against US President Bush and President Musharraf for his support of the United States.
Protesters sounded similar themes without violence in other cities - 5,000 in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, 2,000 in Chaman and several hundred in the north-western city of Peshawar.
Two of the clerics who helped organise protests were placed under house arrest for three months, the Interior Ministry said.
Mr Maulana Fazal-ur Rehman, leader of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party (JUI) had already been under house arrest twice since Sunday after leading demonstrations in the days before the strikes began. Mr Azam Tariq, chief of the Sipah-e-Sahaba party, was detained at Lahore airport en route to Islamabad for a meeting of religious leaders and escorted back to southern Pakistan.
The whereabouts of a third cleric, Mr Samiul Haq, the pro-Taliban leader of the Afghan Defence Council, were not known. Police would only confirm he had been detained, and his spokesman, Mr Yousaf Shah, said he was taken "to an unknown place, and we are not in contact with him".
Meanwhile another hardline cleric emerging as a leader behind a series of violent protests across Pakistan yesterday called on his followers to incite a nationwide revolt. Mr Maulana Atta-ur Rehman told hundreds of supporters in Peshawar that it was their duty as Muslims to turn against the government.
"We will have an open war against Jews, Christians, Israel, America, everyone," he shouted to the cheering crowd outside a mosque in the narrow lanes of the old city. "The Pakistan nation should seize their nuclear weapons and fire them at America."