PARIS, Sept 21: Protests against a hate film and some anti-Islam sketches turned deadly in Pakistan, but remained mostly peaceful in other Muslim countries.

In France, where the publication of the sketches stoked anger over a blasphemous video made in California, the authorities banned all protests over the issue.

“There will be strictly no exceptions. Demonstrations will be banned and broken up,” said Interior Minister Manuel Valls.

Tunisia’s Islamist-led government also banned protests against the images published by French weekly Charlie Hebdo. Four people were killed and almost 30 wounded last week when the US embassy was stormed in a protest over the film.

Many western and Muslim politicians and clerics appealed for calm, denouncing those behind the blasphemous film and sketches, but also condemning violent reactions to it.

About 900 people gathered for a protest against the film in the Afghan capital, Kabul, chanting “death to America’’ and burning an effigy of President Barack Obama and an American flag.

A few hundred demonstrators also protested inside a mosque in the eastern city of Ghazni.

The United States closed its diplomatic missions across Indonesia due to continuing demonstrations over the anti-Islam film.

Small and mostly orderly protests were held outside the US Embassy in Jakarta and in the cities of Surabaya and Medan, along with a couple other smaller towns.

About 2,000 Muslims burned effigies of President Barack Obama and American flags at a protest after Friday prayers in the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, demanding that the United States ban the film.

Over 2,000 people marched through the streets of the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, in protest against the film. They burned a makeshift coffin draped in an American flag, and an effigy of Obama.

Police enforced a daylong curfew in parts of Indian-held Kashmir’s main city, Srinagar, and chased away protesters opposing the anti-Islam film.

Authorities in the region also temporarily blocked mobile phone and Internet services to prevent viewing the film clips.

Arab countries

Protests went off peacefully in the Arab world, where last week several embassies were attacked and the US envoy to Libya was killed in an initial burst of unrest over the film.

A few dozen Egyptians protested near the French embassy in Cairo, but were kept away from the premises by police deployed in large numbers to avoid a repeat of violence at the US embassy last week.

Religious leaders in Egypt, where Islamist parties have moved to the heart of government since Hosni Mubarak was toppled, have expressed outrage, but urged a peaceful response.

In remarks to a reporter, the leader of the Nour Party, one of the biggest Islamist parties in Egypt, echoed calls for the criminalisation of insults to religions including Islam. But he said it was important to separate between an offender and an entire society.

In Yemen, where the US embassy was stormed last week, several hundred protesters chanted anti-American slogans, but riot police blocked the route to the embassy.

Anger over the film brought several thousand Shias and Sunnis together in a rare show of sectarian unity in Iraq’s southern city of Basra, where they burnt US and Israeli flags.

Lebanon’s Hezbollah-run Al-Manar television showed thousands of people waving Lebanese and yellow Hezbollah flags as they marched past the Roman ruins of Baalbek and shouted slogans such as “Death to America, death to those who insult the Prophet (PBUH)”.

Europe

Several hundred people gathered in the city of Freiburg in southwest of Germany to protest the film. Some carried banners, saying: “The dignity of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) is our dignity.”

The interior ministry postponed a poster campaign “aimed at countering radical Islam among young people” due to tensions caused by the anti-Islam video.

Dozens gathered outside the US Embassy in the Norwegian capital, Oslo, to protest the hate film. Some 70 people took part in the hour-long demonstration.—Agencies