Protests spread against anti-Islam film Mr Rahimi did not disclose how Iran intended to carry out its threat and his government did not go so far as to repeat the fatwa issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini against Sir Salman Rushdie in 1989 for his depiction of Mohammed in "The Satanic Verses." Islamist leaders have appeared determined to draw a link between the two cases. A day after a senior Iranian cleric raised the bounty on the author's head, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbollah, denounced the film as an ever greater insult to Islam than "The Satanic Verses." Responding to his call for a demonstration of public anger in Lebanon, thousands of followers of the Shia militant group, which is funded and armed by Iran, massed in the slums of south Beirut. "The whole world needs to see your anger on your faces, in your fists and your shouts," Sheikh Nasrallah said. The whole world should know that the Prophet has followers who will not be silent in the face of humiliation. President Barack Obama has raised alerts at 65 US embassies and consulates in the past week and approved the removal yesterday of 100 embassy staff members and American citizens from Tunisia after the US embassy was attacked last week. The US also warned against travel to Lebanon. More than 1,000 members of the Tunisian security forces yesterday surrounded the al-Fatah mosque, where a Salafist leader wanted by police over clashes at the US embassy was meeting hundreds of followers. Across the region, some demonstrations have been spontaneous, but many have been called by leaders of religious parties seeking to advance their Islamist credentials. Hundreds of protesters demonstrating against the film torched a press club and a government building in the northwestern Pakistani town of Wari, setting off clashes with police that killed one demonstrator and wounded several others. Another was killed in Karachi. Raja Pervez Ashraf, the prime minister, later ordered the suspension of YouTube, where what he called the "blasphemous" video has been easily viewed. Many in the crowd shouted "Death to America!" It was the first violence seen in the world's most populous Muslim country in reaction to the film. In Europe, fringe groups who are in favour of the film are now beginning to pose a freedom of speech dilemma for leaders, who have denounced the work as crass and insensitive while calling for restraint from protestors.