Denmark Urges Calm Amid Cartoon Fury

PM Calls Protests 'Global Crisis'; 3 Demonstrators Killed In Afghanistan

(CBS/AP)  "It's an incredibly emotive issue. This is something that really upset Afghans," said Joanna Nathan, senior Afghanistan analyst at the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based research institute. "But it is also being used to agitate and motivate the crowds by those against the government and foreign forces being here."

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the leader of the Organization of Islamic Conference and the European Union's foreign policy chief condemned the violence and appealed for calm.

"Aggression against life and property can only damage the image of a peaceful Islam," said a statement released Tuesday by Annan, the EU's Javier Solana and Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu of the OIC.

"These events make the need for renewed dialogue, among and between communities of different faiths and authorities of different countries, all the more urgent," it said. "We call on them to appeal for restraint and calm, in the spirit of friendship and mutual respect."

On Tuesday, protesters armed with assault rifles and grenades attacked the NATO base in the remote northern city of Maymana, which is manned by peacekeepers from Norway, Finland, Latvia and Sweden, local officials said.

Three protesters were shot to death by Afghan and Norwegian forces and 22 others were wounded, said Sayed Aslam Ziaratia, the provincial deputy police chief.

NATO said it only fired live ammunition into the air as a warning. Five Norwegian peacekeepers were injured and were in stable condition, NATO said.

Provincial Gov. Mohammed Latif said he suspected al Qaeda may have had a hand in the riot. He said two men from eastern Afghanistan were arrested during the protest and were being interrogated to see whether they were militants.

"The violence today looked like a massive uprising. It was very unusual," Latif said.

The previous day, about 2,000 protesters tried to storm the main U.S. military base in Afghanistan, at Bagram, north of Kabul — the hub of the operations by about 20,000 American forces that have been fighting for four years against militant supporters of the former Taliban regime ousted in late 2001.

Police shot dead two protesters. A top local official claimed al Qaeda and Taliban militants had incited the crowd.

Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak told The Associated Press in a phone interview Tuesday that was possible, but he stressed that the government has no evidence.

"Once these crowds get together, they often get out of control, here and in other countries," he said. "But if this goes on, we're going to have to take a closer look to see if there is more behind it."

The unrest in Maymana forced NATO to send 150 British troops to help secure the besieged base, while two American A-10 attack aircraft were also flown to the city. The U.N. evacuated nonessential staff.

Tuesday saw the biggest protest yet in Pakistan, where 5,000 people chanted, "Hang the man who insulted the prophet," and burned effigies of one cartoonist and Denmark's prime minister. The rally, sponsored by a hardline Islamic provincial government in the country's northwest, passed off peacefully.

Thousands of Egyptians and Jordanians also demonstrated peacefully, calling for a boycott of Danish products and the cutting of ties with Copenhagen including. About 10,000 people, mostly students, joined demonstrations at universities in Cairo.