Gunmen surround EU office as cartoons draw Islamic ire

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Armed militants angered by a cartoon drawing of the Prophet Muhammad published in European newspapers surrounded EU offices in Gaza on Thursday and threatened to kidnap foreigners as outrage over the caricatures spread across the Islamic world.\nMore than 300 students demonstrated in Pakistan, chanting "Death to France!" and "Death to Denmark!" -- two of the countries where newspapers published the drawings. Other protests were held in Syria and Lebanon.\nOfficials in Afghanistan, Iran and Indonesia condemned the publication. In Paris, the daily France Soir fired its managing editor after it ran the caricatures Wednesday.\nA Jordanian newspaper took the bold step of running some of the drawings, saying it wanted to show its readers how offensive the cartoons were but also urging the world's Muslims to "be reasonable." Hours later, the owners of the weekly, Shihan, said they had fired its editor and withdrawn the issue from sale, and the government threatened legal action.\nForeign journalists, diplomats and aid workers began leaving Gaza as gunmen there threatened to kidnap citizens of France, Norway, Denmark and Germany unless those governments apologize for the cartoon.\nGunmen in the West Bank city of Nablus entered four hotels to search for foreigners to abduct and warned their owners not to host guests from several European countries. Gunmen said they were also searching apartments in Nablus for Europeans.\nMilitants in Gaza said they would shut down media offices from France, Norway, Denmark and Germany, singling out the French news agency Agence France-Presse.\n"Any citizens of these countries, who are present in Gaza, will put themselves in danger," a Fatah-affiliated gunman said outside the EU Commission's office in Gaza, flanked by two masked men holding rifles.\nIf the European governments don't apologize by Thursday evening, "any visitor of these countries will be targeted," he said.\nThe furor over the drawings, which first ran in the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten in September, cuts to the question of which is more sacred in the Western world -- freedom of expression or respect for religious beliefs. The cartoons include an image of Muhammad wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse.\nIslamic law, based on clerics' interpretation of the Quran and the sayings of the prophet, absolutely forbids depictions, even positive ones, of the Prophet Muhammad in order to prevent idolatry.\nThe drawings have prompted boycotts of Danish goods, bomb threats and demonstrations against Danish facilities.\nThe Danish newspaper defended its decision to publish the caricatures, citing freedom of expression, but apologized to Muslims for causing offense.\nFrance Soir and several other European papers reprinted the drawings in solidarity with the Danish daily. Jyllands-Posten also had put some of the drawings briefly on its Web site, and the images still can be found elsewhere on the Internet.\nThe Israeli newspaper Maariv published a tiny version of the Muhammad-bomb caricature Thursday, on page 16.\nForeign journalists were pulling out of Gaza on Thursday, and foreign media organizations were canceling plans to send more people in.\nNorway suspended operations at its office in the West Bank town of Ram after receiving threats connected to publication of the cartoons by the Norwegian Christian newspaper Magazinet.