U.S. & World News

BEIRUT, Lebanon (CBS) ― Thousands of Muslims rampaged in Beirut on Sunday, setting fire to the Danish Embassy, burning Danish flags and lobbing stones at a Maronite church to show their anger over caricatures of Islam's Prophet Mohammed.

Troops fired shots into the air, and tear gas and water cannons at the crowds to try pushing the protesters back. Security officials said at least 18 people were injured, and witnesses said at least 10 people were taken away by ambulance.

The rioting mirrored a violent melee a day earlier outside the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus in neighboring Syria, where demonstrators charged security barriers and sent the buildings up in flames.

Those attacks earned widespread condemnation from European nations. On Sunday, defense ministers meeting in Germany urged calm and respect, both for religion and freedom of the press.

In a bluntly worded statement, the White House blamed Syria for backing the protests and for failing to provide protect diplomatic facilities, calling it "inexcusable," reports CBS News correspondent Mark Knoller.

"Syria must act decisively to protect all foreign embassies and citizens in Damascus from attack," White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said in a statement. "We will hold Syria responsible for such violent demonstrations since they do not take place in that country without government knowledge and support."

Lebanon's Grand Mufti Mohammed Rashid Kabbani denounced the violence and appealed for calm, accusing infiltrators of sowing the dissent to "harm the stability of Lebanon."

"Those who are committing these acts have nothing to do with Islam or with Lebanon," said Prime Minister Fuad Saniora. "This is absolutely not the way we express our opinions."

But thousands, incensed by caricatures of Muhammad widely published in European newspapers, including one of the prophet wearing a turban shaped like a lit bomb, continued to protest across the Muslim world.

In the Afghan city of Mihtarlam, some 3,000 demonstrators burned a Danish flag and demanded that the editors at the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, the first to publish the cartoons in September, be prosecuted for blasphemy, said Gov. Sher Mohammed Safi.

Some 1,000 people tried to march to the offices of the United Nations and other aid groups in Fayzabad. Police fired shots into the air to disperse them, officials said. No one was hurt.

In the West Bank city of Ramallah, students in uniform, age 13 and even younger, carried protest posters and shouted: "No to offending our prophet."

In Iraq, about 1,000 Sunni Muslims demonstrated outside a mosque in the insurgent hotbed city of Ramadi.

"Protect the Prophet, God is Great," the protesters shouted. A giant banner read: "Iraq must end political, diplomatic, cultural and economic relations with the European countries that supported the Danish insult against Prophet Muhammad and all Muslims."

Another 1,000 supporters of fiery Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr rallied in Amarah, denouncing Denmark, Israel and the United States and demanding that Danish and Norwegian diplomats be expelled.

Denmark's Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen has said he personally disapproves of the caricatures and any attacks on religion, but has insisted he cannot apologize on behalf of his country's independent press.

Media in several European nations and New Zealand recently have reprinted the controversial cartoons, calling it an expression of freedom of the press.

But many Muslims said the cartoons lampooning Muhammad were degrading, particularly to adherents of a religion that forbids the publication of images of Muhammad for fear they could lead to idolatry.

More than 700 Muslims marched Sunday through Auckland, New Zealand's largest city, to protest the cartoons' publication in two New Zealand newspapers.

In Beirut, protesters came by the busloads to rally outside the Danish Embassy, where some 2,000 troops and riot police were deployed for protection. But the protest degenerated into violence when a group of extremists tried to break through the security barrier.

"There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God!" the protesters said. Demonstrators attacked police with stones and torched fire engines, witnesses said. Black smoke billowed from the area.

A security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press, said embassy staff had been evacuated two days ago. The Danish Foreign Ministry urged Danes to leave Lebanon as soon as possible.

"It is a critical situation and it is very serious," Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller said on Danish public radio Sunday.

The trouble threatened to rile sectarian tensions when protesters began stoning St. Maroun Church, one of the city's main Maronite Catholic churches, and property in Ashrafieh, a Christian area. Sectarian tension is a sensitive issue in Lebanon, where Muslims and Christian fought a 15-year civil war that ended in 1990.

Charles Rizk, Lebanon's minister of justice, urged leaders to help bring an end to the violence. "What is the guilt of the citizens of Ashrafieh of caricatures that were published in Denmark? This sabotage should stop," Rizk, a Christian, said on LBC television.

Austria, which holds the rotating EU presidency, condemned the attacks on European embassies: "Such acts can by no means be legitimized and are utterly unacceptable."

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier pushed for intercultural dialogue.

"We all agree that words and deeds that insult or ridicule other religions or cultures do not contribute to mutual understanding," he said at a security conference in Germany. "Both freedom of the press and freedom of religion are great liberties — those who use them must use them with care."

Moeller, the Danish foreign minister, said: "enough is enough."

"Now it has become more than a case about the drawings: Now there are forces that want a confrontation between our cultures," he said on Danish radio. "It is in no one's interest, neither to them or us."

(© 2006 CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)