A MINISTER in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh has offered a £6m reward to anyone who beheads one of the Danish cartoonists who outraged Muslims by depicting the prophet Muhammad.

Yaqoob Qureshi, minister of minority welfare, said the killer would also receive his weight in gold. He made the offer during a rally in his constituency in Meerut, northeast of Delhi. Protesters then burnt an effigy of a cartoonist and some Danish flags.

A Pakistani cleric has also offered a $1m reward — and a car — as a “prize” to anyone who kills one of the cartoonists. Mohammed Yousaf Qureshi made his announcement after Friday prayers in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar.

The rewards were offered as it emerged that 11 people had been killed in riots outside the Italian consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi in protests linked to the controversy over the cartoons.

The protesters were said to have been angered by reports that Roberto Calderoli, an Italian minister, had appeared in public in a T-shirt with one of the images on it. Calderoli, the reforms minister, resigned yesterday “ to stop the shameful exploitation directed against me”.

Violent protests against the cartoons spread last night to Nigeria where demonstrators in the northern states of Borno and Katsina set fire to 11 churches. Police said 16 people died in the clashes, raising the death toll across the world to 43.

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