Muslim rage continues against Denmark 

Thousands of Palestinians protested for a second day against Denmark for allowing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad to be published, saying an apology by the newspaper involved was not enough.

Demonstrators burnt 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. "I can confirm we evacuated Jyllands-Posten. There has been a bomb threat and we have evacuated the building," a police spokesman said.

The offices of Jyllands-Posten in its headquarters in Denmark's second city Arhus and in the capital Copenhagen were evacuated and police and sniffer dogs searched the buildings.

The newspaper apologised on Monday, but that was not enough for the Gaza protestors.

"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 UN headquarters.

Saudi Arabia has recalled its ambassador from Copenhagen and Libya has closed its embassy. Qatar condemned the cartoons.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari told the Danish ambassador of the government's "condemnation of the insult and disrespect expressed by a daily Danish newspaper".

Danish troops based in southern Iraq raised their state of alert. "The Defence Ministry evaluates the threat as real since it comes from a reliable source," the Politiken newspaper's Web site quoted Danish Defence Minister Soren Gade as saying.

But Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen repeated that his government could not apologise on behalf of independent media who had only exercised their right to free speech.

The Gaza protestors fired bullets in the air, chanted anti-Danish slogans and burnt Danish and US flags as well as portraits of Rasmussen and US 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.

Annan talk

Danish news agency Ritzau said Denmark's Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller would discuss the issue on Tuesday with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in London.

He earlier met a number of Arab foreign ministers there on the sidelines of a conference on Afghanistan.

Muslim leaders in Denmark said they were satisfied with the newspaper's apology and urged an end to the boycott.

"We will in clear terms thank the prime minister and Jyllands-Posten for what they have done," said Kasem Ahmad, spokesman of the Islamic Religious Community in Denmark.

But in Iraq, the influential Sunni Muslim Cleric's Association backed the boycott which Saudi religious leaders have supported, and widened it to Norway where a newspaper has also printed the cartoons.

"We join our voices to those who called for an economic and diplomatic boycott of Denmark and Norway unless those two countries submit an official apology and admit their mistake," a spokesman said.

Norway's Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg expressed regret, but refused to apologise.

"We cannot apologise for something written by newspapers in a country with freedom of expression like Norway," Norway's NTB news agency quoted him as saying on Tuesday. "But I am sad that this may have been hurtful for many Muslims."

Danish-Swedish dairy producer Arla, one of the companies hardest hit by the boycott, is having to lay off workers because of a fall in demand, Danish media said.

Islam sees images of its prophets as disrespectful and caricatures as blasphemous. One of the drawings published in September seemed to portray the Prophet as a terrorist.