Tens of thousands of Pakistanis wielding sticks and waving green flags rallied in Karachi against cartoons of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) on Thursday, the latest in a wave of protests in which five people have died. A crowd of up to 50,000 rallied in the main commercial district of the sprawling southern city, and some torched effigies of U.S. President George W. Bush and Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Reuters reported. Protesters wearing green headbands shouted slogans of "Here I come, O'Mohammad" and "Death to blasphemers" as thousands of policemen and paramilitary troops looked on. The crowd was dispersed peacefully at the end, in contrast to the violence seen in Islamabad, Lahore and Peshawar earlier this week. Armed troops were stationed on the roof-tops and roadsides of a city that has been consumed by religious, sectarian and ethnic violence over the past two decades. Police have arrested some 200 people in Lahore over the past 24 hours for involvement in violence on Tuesday and Wednesday, but that did not stop students loyal to Jamaat-e-Islami, the country's most influential Islamist party, from holding a small rally inside the main university.
