Reuters
Mon Feb 6, 2006 12:37 PM ET

(Reuters) - Fresh protests erupted across Asia and the Middle East on Monday over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, despite calls by world leaders for calm.

The cartoons, one of which showed the Prophet Mohammad with a turban resembling a bomb, were first published by the Danish Jyllands-Posten newspaper last September, but the row erupted in earnest late last month.

Here is a short chronology of the main events since then:

Jan 26 - Muslim anger over the cartoons sparks a boycott of Danish dairy products in Saudi Arabia.

Jan 29 - Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen says his government cannot act against the cartoons.

Jan 30 - The Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten issues an apology.

Feb 1 - Newspapers in France and Germany reprint the cartoons, saying press freedom is more important than protests.

-- The owner of the Paris newspaper France Soir sacks his managing editor after the paper printed the cartoons.

-- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan says freedom of the press should not be an excuse for insulting religions.

Feb 3 - Vebjoen Selbekk, editor of the Christian Magazinet newspaper in Oslo, which reprinted the cartoons, says he regrets publication. He says he has received dozens of death threats.

-- Up to 300 militant Indonesian Muslims go on a rampage in the lobby of a building housing the Danish embassy in Jakarta.

-- In Jordan, the editor of the Shihan weekly is dismissed by the paper's publishers hours after it carried the cartoons.

Feb 4 - Several thousand demonstrators set fire to the Danish and the Norwegian embassies in Damascus.

Feb 5 - Demonstrators set fire to the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Beirut. One protester, trapped by flames, dies jumping from the building.

-- Lebanese Interior Minister Hassan al-Sabaa resigns.

Feb 6 - In the Iranian capital, Tehran, about 200 people pelt the embassy of EU president Austria with petrol bombs.

-- A newspaper in Ukraine publishes the cartoons, joining others in Denmark, Norway, France, Bulgaria, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Hungary, Poland, the United States, Japan, the Netherlands, Malaysia, New Zealand and Australia.