ISLAMA BATH (Reuters) – Thousands of Pakistani Islamists clashed with police for a second day on Tuesday in protest of the arrest of their leader ahead of marches denouncing French cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad, officials said.
At least one activist and one police officer were killed in wounds sustained overnight after Islamists blocked highways, train tracks and main and exit routes, paralyzing affairs in almost every major city.
Police fired tear gas to disperse the protesters, the government official Naveed Zaman told Reuters, adding that they refused to leave until the release of their leader, Saad Rizvi, who was arrested on Monday.
Rizvi is the head of an extremist group, Tehrik-i-Labaik Pakistan (TLP), which has become prominent and has blamed the blasphemy against Islam.
The protesters beat one officer, who was killed on Tuesday, and wounded at least 40, a police spokesman in eastern Lahore told Reuters.
One protester was killed in a southwestern district, a police chief said on condition of anonymity.
The video showed protesters hitting and dragging police and pedestrians, who condemned government adviser Hafiz Tahir Ashrafi. He told Reuters the law would run against those responsible.
The group blocked one of the main roads to the capital at the end of last year and only stopped their protest after the government signed an agreement with them and agreed to sign a boycott of French products.
At the time, protests erupted in several Muslim countries over France’s response to a deadly attack on a teacher who showed mockery of the Prophet Mohammad during a civilian lesson with cartoons.
The Pakistani parliament has condemned the reprint of cartoons in France and called on the government to withdraw its ambassador.
To Muslims, the portrayal of the Prophet is blasphemous.
The agreement with the government was revised earlier this year to extend the deadline for a parliamentary decision to suspend the French envoy to April 20, when the group planned to hold nationwide rallies.
Police Rizvi arrested before the protests.
“We are on the street because the government has not complied with the agreement,” said the group’s spokesman, Ejaz Ashrafi.
He said he had received reports that eight protesters had been killed in the clashes.
The French embassy in Islamabad and the foreign ministry in Pakistan did not respond to a request for comment.
Reporting by Asif Shahzad in Islamabad and Mubasher Bukhari in Lahore; Additional reporting by Umar Farooq in Islamabad and Gul Yousafzai in Quetta; Edited by Nick Macfie