LAHORE – Pakistan blocked access to all social media on Friday, after days of anti-French protests across the country by radical Islamists opposed to cartoons they consider blasphemous.
Sites temporarily blocked on orders from the country’s interior ministry included Twitter and Facebook, said Khurram Mehran, a spokesman for Pakistan’s media regulatory agency.
He gave no further details. The move comes as police officials prepare to clear a large demonstration in the eastern city of Lahore, and just hours after the government said the leader of the outlawed Islamist political party at the forefront of the protests had urged his supporters to stand down.