KARACHI, Pakistan (AFP) – Denmark temporarily shut its embassy in Islamabad and Pakistan recalled its envoy from Copenhagen yesterday as fresh protests against cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed sparked a diplomatic row.

An Islamic cleric added fuel to the fire by offering a one-million-dollar reward and a car for anyone who killed the cartoonists behind the drawings, first published in a Danish newspaper in September.

Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets for a fifth straight day in Pakistan, with police firing tear gas and waving batons at protesters in the southern city of Karachi and the central city of Multan.

Pakistani police arrested nearly 300 people and put a firebrand Islamic leader under house arrest in a bid to clamp down on the unrest that has left five people dead this week.

But the unrest continued yesterday with police battling around ,2000 protesters who blocked a major highway and threw stones at buses in Karachi. The city was largely shut down by a general strike called by religious parties.

Another 1,000 demonstrators chanting “Death to Denmark” gathered in northwestern Peshawar city, where Maulana Yousaf Qureshi, prayer leader at the historic Mohabat Khan mosque, offered the reward for killing the cartoonists.

A boy was shot and wounded near Lahore when protesters scuffled with police, while some 2,000 Islamists burned Danish, US and Norwegian flags in the southwestern city of Quetta.