There also was a "high number" of injuries, said an official with the Italian Embassy in Tripoli.

In the port city of Benghazi in northeast Libya, protesters set the Italian Consulate on fire, but it was safely evacuated and no employees were injured, said Italy's ambassador to Libya Francesco Trupiano. He said he doubts the consulate will close.

Many of the protesters said they were angry because Italian Reforms Minister Roberto Calderoli recently flaunted a T-shirt displaying one of the controversial cartoons on state TV this week.

The state-run Libyan news agency, Jamahiriya, or Jana, reported on its Web site that the casualties occurred when protesters clashed with police. Jana described the protests as massive but peaceful. It gave no crowd estimates.

The government "strongly denounces" the actions of those who burned part of the Italian consulate, Jana reported.
Protests over the cartoons have escalated in recent weeks, more than four months after they first appeared in a Danish newspaper in September.

CNN