Danish cartoonist survives murder bid

LONDON - Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, whose caricature of Prophet Muhammad sparked fury in the Muslim world, escaped death when a knife-wielding Somali man broke into his house in Denmark.

Westergaard was stunned when the 28-year-old intruder tried to kill him in front of his five-year-old granddaughter after barging into his house in the western city of Aarhus late Friday, BBC reported.

The report said the cartoonist ran into a specially designed room with the granddaughter and raised an alarm, following which police entered and shot the man, seriously wounding him.

According to the Danish police, the Somali man was linked to the radical Islamist al-Shabab militia.

Westergaard’s cartoon, published in Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten in 2005, depicted the Prophet with a bomb in his turban, sparking an international outcry.

The newspaper later apologized. The cartoonist went into hiding amid threats to his life but emerged last year, BBC said.