Thousands of people took to the streets in a handful of Muslim-majority countries on Friday to express their outrage at the desecration of a copy of the Quran in Sweden, a day after protesters stormed the country’s embassy in Iraq.
The protests in Iraq, Lebanon and Iran that followed weekly prayers were controlled and peaceful, in contrast to scenes in Baghdad on Thursday, when demonstrators occupied the Swedish embassy compound for several hours and set a small fire.
The embassy staff had been evacuated before the storming, and the Swedish news agency TT reported that they were relocated to Stockholm for security reasons.
On Friday, thousands gathered in Baghdad’s Sadr City, a stronghold of influential Iraqi Shia cleric and political leader Muqtada al-Sadr, some of whose followers took part in the attack on the embassy.
