Pakistan Karachi protests
Supporters of various religious parties hold their party flags during a rally in Karachi. - Reuters Reuters

Fresh protests have been staged in Karachi over the controversial Innocence of Muslims film, the crude anti-Islamic movie made in the US. Thousands of protesters flooded the main streets of the Pakistan's southern port city shouting slogans against the US government, despite its own condemnation of the film, and the man who made the film, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula.

Despite Obama's best efforts to distance the US from the film, anger in some Islamic nations against the United States refuses to die down.

Waving green flags and banners, the protesters in Karachi severely condemned the US government and Google for refusing to remove the film.

The crowd shouted: "Hang the American filmmaker" and" "We are ready to sacrifice our lives for the honour of Prophet Mohammed."

Trampling on US flags and Obama's pictures, the marchers, spearheaded by top Muslim clerics in the city, raised a war cry.

"We strongly condemn this anti-Islam movie, it is a criminal act," said a cleric Mufti Meneebur Rehman who was leading the march.

The cleric also urged world leaders to introduce a global ban on insulting religious prophets and messengers but in the same breath said he supports freedom of expression.

The clerics once again placed a fresh bounty on the filmmaker's head saying whoever kills him will get gold equal to his body weight. Pakistan's railway minister Ghulam Ahmed Bilour had already set a bounty while inviting "Taliban and al-Qaida brothers" to go after the fiilmmaker.

Cartoons of Mohammed which were published by a few European magazines were also condemned at the rally.

The crowd was estimated to be around 15,000 while hundreds of police and paramilitary forces had been deployed to avoid any violence. Several Islamic organisations inside the country expressed solidarity with the rally and joined the protest. The rally organisers claim "millions of people" participated in the protest.

The government imposed heavy restrictions on such rallies after nearly two dozen people died in previous protests. The rally was allowed after the Islamic clerics promised it would be nonviolent.

Gold Pakistan