USTARZAI, Pakistan — A suicide bombing ripped through a Shiite procession today in northwestern Pakistan, sparking riots during the Muslim sect's most important holiday. At least 22 people were killed and dozens injured, officials said.

The bomb targeted hundreds of people in a bazaar soon after they emerged from the main Shiite mosque in the town of Hangu, district police chief Ayub Khan said.

The Shiites responded by burning shops and cars while clashing with police in the town, located about 125 miles southwest of the capital, Islamabad, Khan said. Army troops moved in to restore order and a curfew was imposed, he said.

Ghani ur-Rehman, the top district administrator, said 22 people were reported killed and more than 50 wounded. He said more than 60 percent of the town bazaar had burned in the violence that following the bombing.

A security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to the media, said some of the fatalities came during gun fights between battling factions in the town after the attack.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — An Iranian state TV announcer depicts cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad as a direct insult to Islam by the Danish government, not a private newspaper. Crowds in Syria — where state control is absolute — set fire to Danish and Norwegian embassies. The U.S. military sees the hand of extremist groups in riots in Afghanistan.As rage over the caricatures continues across the Muslim world, there are growing questions whether governments like Syria and Iran's hard-line clerical regime and extremist groups like the Taliban are fanning the outrage.Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday that Iran and Syria "have gone out of their way to inflame sentiments and to use this to their own purposes. And the world ought to call them on it." Iranian Vice President Isfandiar Rahim Mashaee, speaking to reporters during a trip to Indonesia, rejected the allegation today as "100 percent a lie."Few doubt there is genuine anger among Muslims. For religious and secular Muslims alike, the images of the revered Prophet Muhammad with a bomb strapped to his head are crude, racist and deeply insulting.Since the drawings were first published in a Danish paper in September — and reprinted in other European papers in the past weeks — protests and impromptu boycotts of Danish products have erupted in numerous Arab and Islamic countries.Most have been non-violent. In Egypt, demonstrators — including ones from the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood — have gone out of their way to insist they are peaceful and aren't angry at the Danish people, only the newspaper and the government for not taking a strong enough stance against the insult.But in Iran, Afghanistan, Syria and Lebanon the protests have been more violent.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Hundreds of Shiite Muslims and Sunnis clashed in a western Afghan city today during an important Shiite festival, hurling grenades and burning mosques, officials and witnesses said. At least four people were killed and 51 injured.Islamic extremists are suspected to have incited the violence, said Ismatullah Mohammed, a senior police officer.The fighting followed three days of rioting across Afghanistan over drawings of the Prophet Muhammad, first published in a Danish newspaper. Those riots left 11 dead.Today's fighting started after about 300 Sunnis threw stones at a Shiite mosque during the sect's most important festival, Ashoura, Mohammed said. Such an attack is rare in Afghanistan, where there has been little tension between the two sects.The Shiites responded by attacking Sunnis in a camp for refugees from Afghanistan's past wars, and the violence spread across the city of Herat, with both sides throwing grenades at each other, burning about a dozen cars and two mosques, he said.