Demonstrations outside US embassies in Tunisia

Tunisian police yesterday fired teargas to disperse hundreds of Salafist demonstrators outside the US embassy in Tunis gathered to condemn an anti-Islam film, an AFP photographer said. The intervention came as the demonstrators, estimated to number 300, started to try to break through the gates of the embassy compound after having demonstrated peacefully for several hours outside. Five people were arrested, interior ministry spokesman Khaled Tarrouche said, while a security official said on Tunisian radio that two policemen were injured, apparently by stone-throwing protesters. Hundreds of protesters also demonstrated outside the American embassy in Sudan yesterday, an embassy official said. “I do believe it was a few hundred,” the official said, asking for anonymity. “Our compound was not breached.” Sudan’s foreign ministry expressed “great sorrow” over what it said are escalating insults to Islam in some Western countries, but it also rejected attacks against innocent people unconnected with the slurs. In a statement, the ministry warned that tolerance for those who insult Prophet Muhammad “will instigate hatred between the Muslims and those who are against them and the fuelling of hostility with the Muslims, a matter that will then complicate the preservation of tolerance and religious co-existence.” From gulf times.