KHARTOUM/KABUL. — Around 5 000 protesters in the Sudanese capital angry over an anti-Islam film yesterday stormed the embassies of Britain and Germany, which was torched and badly damaged, an AFP reporter said. Police fired tear gas to disperse the protesters as several of them scaled the roof of the German embassy and others attacked its facade and tore down the flag to replace it with a black Islamist one, the reporter said.
The mob, furious over an anti-Islam film produced in the United States that has triggered similar violence in Libya, Egypt and other parts of the Arab world, then set fire to the building.
Meanwhile, a top Afghan cleric yesterday said US President Barack Obama and “American Jews” were responsible for the deaths of US diplomats in Libya, but urged only peaceful protest against an anti-Islam film.
“This is the work of American Jews, their movie has hurt the sentiments of Muslims around the world,” Enayatullah Baleegh told several thousand worshippers at the Pul-e-Khishti mosque in central Kabul.
Baleegh said it was not the first time Americans had insulted Islam and said the work by “two Americans” —   apparently referring to the film-makers — had resulted in the deaths of American diplomats in Libya.
“These two Jews and President Obama should be held accountable for the death of their diplomats, because it shows the incompetency of the Obama administration and that he could not control such an insulting act,” said the cleric. Mystery remains over who is behind the film, amid conflicting claims of Jewish or Coptic Christian involvement.
US ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed in an attack on Tuesday reportedly by a mob angered by the film.
Baleegh said the “filthy” producers should be held accountable for any US soldiers killed in Afghanistan as a result of Muslim anger over the film, but told worshippers that if they demonstrate “don’t let it be violent”.
Afghanistan is a devout Muslim country where anything seen as insulting to Islam is taken very seriously, often with a violent response.
Riots killed around 40 people earlier this year after US troops burnt copies of the Koran on a military base.
Around 117 000 Nato troops are based in Afghanistan helping Karzai’s government put down a 10-year Taliban insurgency. — AFP.