Gavrilo Princip Update from AFP, with thanks to Nicolei:
Two armed Palestinian groups threatened to target European nationals in the Middle East in the escalating furore over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, as a French newspaper editor was sacked for printing them.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and the Popular Resistance Committee warned that “all nationals and those who work in the diplomatic corps” of Denmark Norway and France “can be considered targets.” on Thursday
The two groups threatened to destroy all local offices and consulates of the three states unless they closed, and called for a Muslim boycott of Danish merchandise to be extended to France and Norway.
Gunmen besieged the European Union’s Gaza City headquarters early Thursday, scrawling the words “Closed Until Further Notice” on its door.Norway announced that it had closed its West Bank mission in response the threats, and was taking them “very seriously”….
In Egypt, the state-owned Al-Gomhurriya newspaper decried the cartoon’s publication as a “conspiracy” and warned that “any attack against our prophet will not go unpunished”, while Tunisia joined Morocco in banning sales of France Soir.
The head of Lebanon’s fundamentalist Hezbollah movement, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, drew a link to the 1989 fatwa, or Islamic sentence, issued against British writer Salman Rushdie by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini.
“If there had been a Muslim to carry out the fatwa of Imam Khomeini against the renegade Salman Rushdie, the scum who are insulting our Prophet Mohammed in Denmark, Norway and France would not dare do so,” he said.
The Danish authorities should be aware that “there are millions of Muslims who are ready to defend the honour of their religion and their prophet,” he warned.
Where are the millions of Muslims who are ready to defend the honour of their religion and their prophet against the likes of Osama bin Laden, who are — we are told by the President and everyone else — dragging their religion through the mud? The fact that we have already seen anger over these cartoons that far outstrips any Muslim anger we have seen anywhere over jihad terrorism is extraordinarily telling.