Riot police break up Mauritania cartoon demo

Riot police used tear gas Thursday to break up a Mauritania demonstration which drew almost 2,000 students protesting the publication of cartoons depicting the
Prophet Mohammed (pbuh).

"We condemn police aggression against a demonstration we wanted to be peaceful and call on the government to accept full responsibility," said student spokesman Mohamed Yahya Ould Ebih.

The protest started on a university campus, where the crowd chanted: "No to blasphemous caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed, yes to the boycott of countries who uphold these insults."

The students then marched on the country's parliament -- where the authorities acted swiftly to disperse the crowd, according to AFP.

Several other protests have taken place in Mauritania, West Africa, since 17 Danish titles reprinted one of 12 cartoons which originally provoked Muslim outcry in 2006.

The caricature features a turban that looked like a bomb with a lit fuse, with the original publication of the series sparking the torching of Danish diplomatic offices in Damascus and Beirut, and the deaths of dozens of people in Nigeria.

The Danish papers re-published the caricature a day after police in Denmark foiled an alleged plot to murder the cartoonist, describing the move as a gesture of solidarity with him and a blow in defense of freedom of expression.

The demonstrators called for the creation of a popular movement "in defense of the Prophet Mohammed" and also urged Mauritania to break off diplomatic relations with Israel.