Palestinian gunmen want to kidnap foreigners from Europe to protest Muhammad drawings

Ibrahim Barzak:

Armed militants angered by a cartoon drawing of the Prophet Muhammad published in European media surrounded EU offices in Gaza Thursday and threatened to kidnap foreigners as outrage over the caricatures spread across the Islamic world.

About a dozen gunmen with ties to the Fatah Party approached the office of the EU Commission. Three jumped on the outer wall and the rest took up positions at the entrance.

In a statement read by one of the gunmen, the group demanded apologies from the governments of Norway, Denmark, France and Germany and called on Palestinians to boycott the products of these countries.

Palestinian gunmen in the West Bank city of Nablus said they were searching apartments for foreigners from several European countries to try to kidnap them to protest the drawings. The claim by the gunmen could not immediately be verified independently.

In a phone call to The Associated Press, a member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a violent offshoot of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah Party, said members of his group are also asking hotel owners in the city not to host citizens of five European countries, including France and Denmark.

In Paris, the daily newspaper France Soir fired its managing editor after it republished the caricatures Wednesday, and Pakistani protesters chanting "Death to France!"

The furor over the drawings, which first ran in a Danish paper 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.

Islamic tradition bars any depiction of the prophet to prevent idolatry. The drawings have divided opinion within Europe and the Middle East, where they have prompted boycotts of Danish goods, bomb threats and demonstrations against Danish facilities.

France Soir and several other European papers reprinted the pictures in a show of solidarity with the Danish daily.

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