Pakistani police fired tear gas and charged with batons on Monday to detain hundreds of students who staged a violent protest against cartoons of Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him). Up to 6,000 students, pelted offices and shops with stones during the protest in the northwestern city Peshawar. "We had no other option but to resort to tear gas and baton-charge them," Mohammad Tahir Khan, a superintendent of police, told Reuters. "We have taken hundreds of them into custody." He said some students sustained minor injuries. Protests against the satirical cartoons, first published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten last September, have been held almost daily in Pakistan since they were reprinted in European newspapers in January and this month. So far the demonstrations in Pakistan, the second most-populous Muslim nation, have not been large by local standards, but a nation-wide strike is slated for March 3.
