At least 24 people were injured Saturday when a protest in Kabul against French magazine Charlie Hebdo turned violent, police said, with officers firing warning shots after demonstrators pelted them with stones.
Some 500 people joined the rally on the outskirts of the Afghan capital to express their anger against the satirical magazine’s publication of sacrilegious cartoons.
“Seven protesters were wounded during the protest and they were taken to hospital,” Kabul police chief Abdul Rahman Rahimi told reporters.
Seventeen policemen were also injured when protesters hurled rocks at them, he added.
Local media, citing witnesses, said at least two people had been killed in the unrest, but the police chief dismissed the reports.
Gunmen had shot dead 12 people at Charlie Hebdo’s Paris offices on January 7.
The satirical weekly, which lampoons everyone from the pope to presidents, had sparked anger in the Islamic world in the past with its cartoons of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).
Many Muslims consider depictions of the Prophet (pbuh) to be blasphemous.
The attack on Charlie Hebdo sparked worldwide protests in defence of freedom of speech, but the magazine stirred fresh anger in Muslim countries a week after the shootings with a defiant “survivors’ issue” that again featured Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) on the front page.
The cartoon prompted angry crowds to pour onto streets from Pakistan to Ivory Coast to vent their rage at the new cover.
At least 20,000 people protested against the magazine in the Herat, Afghanistan, last week, while several thousand others rallied in Kabul chanting “death to France, death to the enemies of Islam”.
Police said Saturday’s protest had been brought under control and the road opened for traffic.
“The protesters were throwing stones at the police, and the police fired some shots in the air to stop the protesters,” said Kabul deputy police chief Gul Agha Rohani.