Police And Protesters Clash In Pakistan

At least 50 people were injured as some 5,000 Pakistanis - some carrying the flags of Islamist groups - protested over a US film.

Officers fired tear gas and live rounds as the demonstrators, many armed with wooden clubs, tried to reach Islamabad's heavily-guarded diplomatic enclave. It is home to most Western embassies, including the US, British and French missions.

The government called in the army to protect the site after protesters broke through a barrier of shipping containers set up by police to block a road leading to the area.

An initial demonstration of around 1,000 swelled to 5,000, with the arrival of protesters carrying the flags of hardline Islamist groups Jamaat-ud-Dawa, Jamaat-e-Islami and Sipah-e-Sahaba - which is banned by the Pakistan government.

Meanwhile, new television adverts emerged in the country showing a US Embassy seal condemning the anti-Islam video along with US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The US State Department warned Americans on Thursday to avoid non-essential travel to Pakistan.

In a separate development, France's interior minister said he would not allow any protests over the film Innocence of Muslims after a violent demonstration last weekend near the US embassy in Paris.

An individual was refused permission to hold a march outside the Grand Mosque in Paris. If he goes ahead, he faces six months in jail and a fine of 7,500 euros (£6,001). 

Meanwhile, the editor of a French satirical magazine that ridiculed the Prophet Mohammad by portraying him naked, was under armed guard as he made his way to the Charlie Hebdo offices on Thursday morning.

Police presence was stepped up outside the magazine's headquarters in Paris and editor Stephane Charbonnier, 'Charb', was escorted by two men, as he passed an armed policeman to enter the building.

The drawings have risked exacerbating a crisis that has seen the storming of US and other Western embassies, the killing of the US ambassador to Libya and a deadly suicide bombing in Afghanistan.

Hundreds of Afghans on Thursday protested for the first time against the French cartoons and staged fresh rallies against the anti-Islam film. About 300 students chanted "death to France, death to America" in Kabul.

About 100 Iranian students demonstrated outside the French embassy in Tehran shouting similar slogans and held placards urging the French people to demand their government respect sacredness and humanity.

The French government, which had urged Mr Hebdo not to print the controversial cartoons, said it was shutting embassies and schools in 20 countries on Friday when protests sometimes break out after Muslim prayers.

But the magazine's lawyer remained defiant, defending the publication's right to poke fun at all symbols of political and religious authority in the name of freedom of expression.

"The caricatures in question are not on the front cover. What scares me about the situation is that they are not on the front page of Charlie Hebdo.

"They used to say: 'It's on the front cover, everybody will see it, that's intolerable.' Now we no longer have the right to put it inside the newspaper, for our own readership of several tens of thousands copies.

"Yet it still creates a planetary scandal. The situation is crazy and that's what we have to think about," said lawyer Richard Malka on France Inter Radio."