The furious backlash against French magazine Charlie Hebdo's cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed have continued with a huge rally in Chechnya.
Hundreds of thousands of people flooded into the centre of Grozny, the capital of Russia's Muslim North Caucasus region of Chechnya, for a mammoth state-sponsored demonstration against caricatures of Mohammed.
An AFP journalist put Monday's rally attendance figure at several hundred thousand, while authorities in the tightly controlled region said more than one million people - almost the entire population of the republic.
"This is a protest against those who support the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed," said Ramzan Kadyrov, who has ruled Chechnya with an iron fist since being installed by Russian President Vladimir Putin a decade ago.
Kadyrov attacked the French government for backing Charlie Hebdo magazine's right to run a Mohammed cartoon on its front cover a week after two Islamist gunmen massacred 12 people in an attack on its Paris office.
"We say firmly that we will never allow anyone to go unpunished for insulting the name of the prophet and our religion," Kadyrov said.
Demonstrators chanted "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest) and released balloons into the sky at the highly choreographed event, as speakers harangued Western governments' argument that printing caricatures of Islam's prophet is a matter of free speech.
Charlie Hebdo's latest cartoon shows the prophet with a tear in his eye, under the headline "All is forgiven". He also holds a sign reading "Je suis Charlie", the slogan that has become a global rallying cry for those expressing sympathy for the victims and support for freedom of speech.
Elsewhere, hundreds of people in Afghanistan and Pakistan demonstrated against Charlie Hebdo, burning French flags and calling for the government to cut diplomatic relations with France.
Demonstrators in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad chanted anti-France slogans and vowed to defend Islam.
"I call on the Afghan government and other Islamic countries to cut off their diplomatic ties with France," 25-year-old protester Matiullah Ahmadzai told AFP.
"We want the French embassy in Kabul closed. France should apologise to Muslim countries."
In neighbouring Pakistan, five protests were held in the northwestern city of Peshawar and one in the southern port city of Karachi.
More than 2,000 Iranians protested outside the French embassy in Tehran, chanting "Death to France", with female protesters segregated from the males.
In Gaza, around 200 radical Islamists - brandishing black jihadist banners - threatened attacks against France.
"French, leave Gaza or we will slaughter you," the crowd chanted in front of the French cultural centre.
Niger, meanwhile, declared three days of mourning from Monday after violent protests left 10 people dead and dozens of churches torched.
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