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Gazans burn Danish flags, demand cartoon apology

GAZA (Reuters) - Thousands of Palestinians protested against Denmark on Tuesday for

allowing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad to be published, and Arab ministers called on the Copenhagen government to punish the newspaper that printed them.

Demonstrators burned Danish flags, chanted "War on Denmark, Death to Denmark" and called for an Arab boycott of products from the small north European country until it showed contrition for the satirical caricatures deemed blasphemous by Islam.

Anger has spread across much of the Muslim world.

The offices of the Danish newspaper were evacuated on Tuesday after a bomb threat, but were later given the all-clear after police with sniffer dogs searched the building.

The newspaper apologized on Monday, but that was not enough for the Gaza protesters.

"We feel great rage at the continued attacks on Islam and the Prophet of Islam and we demand that the Danish government make a clear and public apology for the wrongful crime," Nafez Azzam, a leader of Islamic Jihad, told the crowd of supporters of his militant group outside U.N. headquarters.

The protesters fired bullets in the air and burned Danish and U.S. flags as well as portraits of Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen and U.S. President George W. Bush.

Azzam called for a pan-Arab boycott of all Danish products, many of which -- dairy goods, shampoo and sweets for example -- are sold in the Palestinian territories.

Arab interior ministers called for retribution.

"We ask the Danish authorities to take the necessary measures to punish those responsible for this harm and to take action to avoid a repeat," Arab interior ministers said in a statement after a meeting in Tunis.