Two killed in Pakistan cartoons violence

ISLAMABAD - Security guards shot dead two men, police used teargas on students in Islamabad's diplomatic enclave and protesters attacked Western businesses in Pakistan's most violent reaction yet to cartoons of the Prophet.

In Iran, scores of demonstrators hurled petrol bombs at the British embassy in renewed protests against the cartoons and Western opposition to Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

The EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana said the dispute should not be allowed to divide Europe and the Muslim world, while a senior US state department official said it showed moderate Muslims needed a stronger voice.

Solana is touring Muslim states to try to calm anger over the cartoons, published by Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten last September and reprinted in many European countries in a debate about the rights and restrictions of free speech.

Many Muslims believe it is blasphemous to depict the Prophet Mohammad.

Pakistan's Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao said guards at a bank that was attacked by protesters in the eastern city of Lahore shot dead two men.

Police fired into the air and baton-charged protesters who set vehicles alight and ransacked outlets of international fast food companies, including McDonald's, KFC and Pizza Hut, and the Norwegian mobile phone firm Telenor, witnesses said.

- REUTERS