Several thousand Syrian demonstrators set the Danish embassy on fire on Saturday to protest the printing by a Danish newspaper of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad. The fire badly damaged the embassy's building, a Reuters witness said, but fire engines later put it out. Protesters also threw stones at the building, shattering windows.Chanting "God is Great," they stormed the embassy, burned the Danish flag and replaced it with another flag reading "No God but Allah, Mohammad is His Prophet."
BBC News 24 quoted Jorgen Nielsen, the representative of Danish Institute in Damascus, as saying the building was empty at the time because the protest was expected. The embassy was closed on Saturday. "There were policemen there but it seems to have been a symbolic presence," he said.
| It's almost as if they didn't care, eh? |
Protestors were expected to march to the Norwegian embassy as well, witnesses said.