The anger at the Pope’s apparent linkage of Islam and violence starts to become surreal:
A hardline Somalian cleric called on Muslims to “hunt down” and kill the Pope, while five churches were firebombed in the Palestinian territories.
A bomb exploded in a church in Iraq and 2000 Palestinians hit the streets in protest.
The Pope’s army of security personnel are taking the threats seriously and security has been tightened around the papal summer residence at Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome.
Morocco’s King Mohammed VI immediately recalled his ambassador from the Vatican on the basis of “offensive remarks about Islam and Muslims made by Pope Benedict XVI at Regensburg university on September 12.”
In Iraq ‘militants’ are taking time out from sectarian murder to join the fight against the Roman Catholic church:
An Iraqi insurgent group threatened the Vatican with a suicide attack over the Pope’s remarks, according to a statement posted yesterday on the Web.
“We swear to God to send you people who adore death as much as you adore life,” said the message posted in the name of the Mujahedeen Army on a Web site frequently used by militant groups. The message’s authenticity could not be independently verified. The statement was addressed to “you dog of Rome” and threatens to “shake your thrones and break your crosses in your home.”
And an Italian aid worker is now confirmed shot dead in Somalia:
After an operation on the woman, whom some witnesses identified as a nun working at a children’s hospital in north Mogadishu, medical staff told a Reuters television reporter that she had died from her injuries.
That’ll teach her boss to go around making untoward allegations.
