Most of Pakistan quiet, but violent protests in 2 border cities

Associated Press WriterISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Enraged by strikes on Afghanistan, thousands of supporters of its Taliban regime burned buildings, battled police and demanded holy war against America on Monday. Two U.N. offices were among the targets.

Although most of the country was calm, violence broke out in two volatile cities along the border with Afghanistan. The rioting came as Pakistan's president insisted his support of the U.S.-led coalition reflected the will of the people, and sidelined two top pro-Taliban generals in his government.

One person was killed and 26 were hurt in the southwestern city of Quetta, a doctor said. Authorities in Quetta uncorked tear gas and fired live ammunition into the air to repel 4,000 agitated demonstrators who torched five movie theaters, damaged a bank and burned the police station.

Members of the paramilitary border police were dispatched when local security forces began to lose control, and smoke was billowing from the city's main market at midafternoon.

"To all Muslims around the world: Prepare yourselves for jihad," said Maulana Noor Mohammed, the provincial head of the religious party Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam.

The dead protester was killed by a stray bullet, according to a physician at the civil hospital in Quetta who gave his name as Dr. Abdullah. He said six people were wounded by stray bullets and 20 were injured as police wielding clubs and firing tear gas clashed with the protesters. Two of the injured were police officers, Abdullah said.

In a separate incident nearby, at least one building at the U.N. Children's Fund compound near Quetta's airport was set on fire Monday afternoon, U.N. officials said. Another was attacked and looted by one of the roving groups of protesters ranging around Quetta, UNICEF staff said.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and UNICEF both have offices in the compound that was attacked. The UNHCR office was pelted with stones and the UNICEF office torched, spokesmen for both agencies said. They said no one was hurt.

The overwhelming majority of Pakistan's 145 million people are Muslim, and Islamic religious parties have strongly condemned U.S. moves against Afghanistan for harboring Osama bin Laden, chief suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

Nevertheless, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has given full support to the U.S. campaign to apprehend bin Laden. On the morning after the attacks, Musharraf appeared in a nationally televised news conference to declare that "the vast majority" of Pakistanis support his stand.

He sidelined two pro-Taliban generals in a shake-up of senior ranks announced immediately before the attacks -- and a day after he extended indefinitely his own term as army chief, but said the moves were unrelated to the current crisis.

"This is a normal military activity which has gone on," Musharraf said. "It has no relationship with events which are taking place, absolutely."

Munawar Hassan, deputy chief of Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan's most powerful religious political party, warned of "serious backlash" within Pakistan's military because of the president's pro-American stance.

"The Pakistan army does not agree with Musharraf," Hassan said.

Neither did protesters in some cities.

In Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, a mob of 400 students set three buses aflame and pelted authorities with stones. At least eight were injured when police charged them with batons and tear gas.

In northwestern Peshawar, both tear gas and steel-tipped sticks were used to scatter 2,000 Taliban supporters as they emerged from a mosque and began to protest.

Police opened fire on several hundred demonstrators in the border town of Landikotal when they tried to stage a pro-Taliban rally. Four people were reported injured, but the extent of -- and reason for -- their injuries were unclear.

In Quetta, crowds chanting anti-American and anti-Musharraf epithets also blocked roads and burned tires, sending plumes of smoke into the air. They set ablaze two city fire vehicles and three passenger buses. Roving bands of demonstrators moved through town, shutting down stores. Two dozen protesters attacked a police station Monday morning but were repulsed.

The rioters were mostly from the pro-Taliban Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam or Party of Islamic Clerics.

Not all demonstrations were violent. In the frontier town of Chaman, nearly 6,000 people -- both Pakistanis and Afghans from across the border -- demonstrated peacefully by sitting cross-legged on a major road, shutting it down and burning a straw effigy of Musharraf.

Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam's leader, under house arrest at his home in the northwestern city of Dera Ismail Khan for much of Sunday to prevent him from leading demonstrations, was released briefly but detained again Monday morning for the same reason. Maulana Fazal-ur Rehman was under heavy armed guard, party spokesman Riaz Durrani told The Associated Press.

The U.S. and British attacks drew impassioned condemnation by some of Pakistan's most influential religious leaders, several of whom warned of consequences in Pakistan.

"It is the duty of every Muslim to support their brothers in this critical hour," said Riaz Durana, central leader of the Taliban-sympathetic Afghan Defense Council in Pakistan's eastern city of Lahore.

Some ordinary citizens were also upset and angry. "Any Muslim who claims that he is a Muslim will not support this attack," retired soldier Mohammed Iqbal said in Lahore.