Three people died and outlets of a Norwegian phone firm, a US fast food restaurant and banks were set ablaze in Pakistan today during continuing violence over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad.
Police said one man was killed in exchange of fire between student protesters and police in the eastern city of Lahore. Two people, including a young boy, died during protests in the main northwestern city of Peshawar.
Police fired tear gas in Peshawar and several other towns of North West Frontier Province (NWFP) to disperse crowds who attacked two franchises of Norwegian mobile telephone firm Telenor, a KFC fast food outlet, as well as banks and cinemas.
The protests came a day after two people were killed in violent protests in Lahore and despite a province-wide ban on protests in the city announced by its chief minister, Pervez Elahi, who warned yesterday that violators faced "an iron hand".
The police chief in the town of Tank blamed Taliban supporters.
At least one policeman was wounded in an exchange of fire between police and protesters in Tank. Protesters also torched music shops and Internet cafes in the town close to a tribal region bordering Afghanistan troubled by al Qaeda-linked militants in recent years.
The protests have been the most serious in Pakistan - the second-most populous Muslim nation - since European newspapers republished cartoons of the Prophet that first appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten last September.
Until this week protests around the country against the cartoons had been largely peaceful and appeared to have been officially tolerated by the military-backed government.
Yesterday, hundreds of mainly high school students stormed into the closely guarded diplomatic enclave in the capital Islamabad, forcing police to fire tear gas to disperse them.