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Catholic priest is shot dead on church steps(Daily Mail Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)A ROMAN Catholic priest in Turkey has been shot dead outside his church, possibly in an act of revenge for the publication of the Mohammed cartoons. A teenage youth was seen running from the scene while other witnesses claimed they heard the killer shout: 'Allah is great!' Turkey has been the scene of some of biggest protests against the cartoons. The priest, Andrea Santoro, 60, was shot in the chest, a few hours after a Sunday mass at the Black Sea port of Trabzon. His body was found in the courtyard, just outside the door of the Santa Maria Church. Trabzon's governor Huseyin Yavuzdemir said police had a description of the gunman. Monsignor Luigi Padovese, the apostolic vicar for Anatolia, said the cartoons could have played a role in the killing, or it could have been the priest's work with prostitutes. 'Father Andrea had good relations with the Islamic community,' he said. 'It could have not been anyone but a fanatic. The man eliminated him with one, cold shot.' Earlier, 300 ultranationalist Turks marched to the Danish consulate in Istanbul. In a separate protest, also in Istanbul, 2,000 shouted slogans and burned an effigy of the Danish prime minister. The fury was not confined to Muslim nations and there were protests as far afield as Belgium, Afghanistan and New Zealand. IRAN has formed a committee to review trade ties with nations in Europe which have published the cartoons, and recalled its ambassador from Denmark. In IRAQ militant group the Islamic Army urged followers to kidnap Danes and 'cut them into as many pieces as the number of newspapers that printed the cartoons'. In the NETHERLANDS a group called the Arab European League posted anti-Jewish cartoons on its website. It said the images - one of which showed Holocaust victim Anne Frank in bed with Hitler - were being displayed as part of an exercise in free speech. |