Protesters in Delhi vent their fury on Friday. (PTI)

Hyderabad, Feb. 17: Mob fury erupted against Danish cartoons of the Prophet in Hyderabad’s old city today, with crowds throwing stones at police, pedestrians and cars and looting shops after Friday prayers.

Although the violence was soon quelled, a large number of BJP cadres gathered near the Muslim-dominated Charminar area in the evening, thickening the tension till the police broke up the mob by 7 pm.

The Rapid Action Force, paramilitary and the police were manning key locations in the old city, sealed off for the night with prohibitory orders.

Earlier, the police had arrived just in time to thwart the day’s potentially most inflammatory incident. A mob tried to storm a missionary school near Mehdipatnam with about 3,000 pupils cowering inside, but its gates held out long enough for word to reach the police.

In the afternoon, crowds stamped on Danish national flags as they walked into mosques and later burnt them in public.

The call for the street protests was given by a political party, Majlis-e-Itahadul-Musalmeen, after the police denied it permission for a rally against the cartoons.

At least five persons, including a woman, were injured in the stone-throwing while four state buses and at least 10 private cars were damaged, the police said. Some 15 shops, including a few jewellery stores, were attacked and looted. Ten people, including Majlis councillor Mohammed Ghouse, were taken into custody.

At one point, hundreds of chanting youths tried to march into localities dominated by a different community, prompting the police to beat them back with batons and teargas.

“The police had to lob teargas shells and do a mild lathicharge to quell the mobs that resorted to stone-throwing after they came out of the mosques,” deputy commissioner Sandeep Sandilya said.

He explained the Majlis hadn’t been allowed to hold a rally keeping in mind the already growing tension in the old city.

Majlis leaders, however, decided to go ahead and hold a rally at Mehdipatnam anyway and gathered some 6,000 people. But when he heard of the BJP’s “counter dharna” at Charminar, the Majlis chief and Hyderabad MP, Assaduddin Owaisi, called off the rally to avoid a flare-up.

The Assembly earlier passed a special resolution condemning the publication of the cartoons in the European media.