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PESHAWAR, Pakistan - A Pakistani cleric offered a reward of $25,000 and a car and claims a local jewelers association would also give a $1 million bounty for killing a cartoonist who drew the Prophet Muhammad. In Libya, a demonstration against the caricatures left the Italian consulate on fire and at least nine people dead, according to an Italian diplomat.

Denmark, where a newspaper first published the cartoons, temporarily closed its embassy in Pakistan and advised its citizens to leave the country.

An Italian consular official, Antonio Simoes-Concalves, said nine protesters had been killed in the demonstration in the Libyan city of Benghazi as armed police fired bullets and tear gas on a crowd of more than 1,000 demonstrators.

Libyan security officials said 11 people had been killed or wounded, but they gave no breakdown.

''They are still continually firing,'' Simoes-Concalves said late Friday, speaking by telephone from inside the consulate where he was holed up. ''They haven't managed to block them.''

The Italian Foreign Ministry confirmed that the first floor of the consulate had been set on fire after the crowd charged into the grounds late Friday.

Libyan state television showed firefighters trying to put out the fire, ambulances taking casualties away from the scene and five cars that were severely damaged in the riot.

Security officials said the demonstrators hurled stones and bottles at the consulate, and later entered the grounds and set fire to the building and a consular car. Police fired shots to try to disperse the crowd, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

No Italians were injured, the Italian Foreign Ministry said.

There was no indication why the Italian consulate was targeted in this North African country, once an Italian colony. The Italian Foreign Ministry said the consulate was the only Western diplomatic mission in Benghazi.

In Rome, Italian politicians blamed Cabinet Minister Roberto Calderoli, who said he would wear a T-shirt printed with the prophet cartoons; Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi asked for his resignation Friday.

But Italian ambassador Francesco Trupiano said that the rioters' main protest was against the original publication in the European media of the caricatures.

In Pakistan, Mohammed Yousaf Qureshi announced the bounty for killing a cartoonist to about 1,000 people outside the historic Mohabat Khan mosque in the northwestern city of Peshawar.

He said the mosque and the religious school he leads would give a $25,000 reward and a car for killing the cartoonist who drew the caricatures - considered blasphemous by Muslims. He said a local jewelers association would also give $1 million, but no representative of the association was available to confirm the offer.

Qureshi did not appear aware that 12 different people had drawn the pictures.

In Islamabad, visiting former President Clinton criticized the cartoons but said Muslims wasted an opportunity to build better ties with the West by holding violent protests.

''I can tell you, most people in the United States deeply respect Islam ... and most people in Europe do,'' he said.