At least
19 people have died as violent protests erupted on the streets of Pakistan's
main cities in anger at an anti-Islam film made in the US.
Fourteen
people were killed in the port city of Karachi and a further five died in the
north-western city of Peshawar, hospital officials said.
Protesters
clashed with police outside the diplomatic enclave in the capital, Islamabad,
near the US embassy.
There has
been widespread unrest over the amateur film, Innocence of Muslims.
Dozens of
people have been reported wounded and BBC correspondents said some were in a
critical condition.
Protests
have already left several people dead around the world, including Pakistan,
where the government had appealed in advance for peaceful protests, declaring a
holiday and "day of love" for the Prophet Muhammad.
Although
US targets have borne the brunt of protests against the film, anti-Western
sentiment has been stoked further by caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad
published this week in the satirical French magazine, Charlie Hebdo.
France
shut embassies and other missions in around 20 countries across the Muslim
world on Friday.
Protests
were banned in France itself and in Tunisia, where France is the former
colonial power, but there were widespread demonstrations elsewhere.
Cinemas
ransacked
But it
was in Pakistan's major cities that protesters took to the streets in big
numbers and tried to march on US diplomatic buildings.
US
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that "all governments have the
duty, the solemn duty, to defend diplomatic missions", AFP news agency
reported.
The worst
of the violence took place in the country's biggest city, Karachi, and the
north-western city of Peshawar, close to Pakistan's lawless tribal belt.
Police in
Karachi fired live bullets in the air to disperse crowds after a large rally
that had begun peacefully turned violent. Several cinemas and banks were set on
fire and there were reports of looting.
When
police tried to stop the protesters heading to the US consulate, there were
reports of gunfire from the crowd and a policeman was killed.
Health
officials said the bodies of dead protesters were taken to two hospitals.
In
Peshawar, protesters ransacked cinemas and a driver for Pakistan's ARY TV was
killed when police opened fire on the crowd.
In the
capital, Islamabad, which saw its first clashes between protesters and security
forces on Thursday, a police checkpoint was burnt as demonstrators tried to
breach the "red zone" where the main embassies and government offices
are based.
Police
used live rounds and tear gas as the crowd swelled to thousands of people.
The BBC's
Aleem Maqbool said the focal point of people's anger was the US embassy and he
had seen more people injured in one hour than all of Thursday.
In
Lahore, protesters toppled over shipping containers that police had placed on
the road to block access to the US consulate.
Phones
suspended
The
low-budget film that has prompted the unrest was made in the US and is said to
insult the Prophet Muhammad.
Its exact
origins are unclear and the alleged producer for the trailer of the film,
Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, is in hiding.
Anti-US
sentiment grew after a trailer for the film dubbed into Arabic was released on
YouTube earlier this month.
US
citizens have been urged not to travel to Pakistan and the US embassy has paid
for adverts on Pakistani TV showing President Barack Obama and Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton condemning the film.
Mobile
phone services had been suspended in many of the biggest cities to limit the potential
for violence but critics questioned the Pakistani government's decision to
declare a public holiday.
Government
security adviser Rehman Malik told the BBC that the public holiday was the
right decision and the protests would have gone ahead regardless.
"Imagine
if I had not done the holiday, school would open, shops would open, the
transport was on the road. Who could have handled it?" he said.
BBC
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