Not a good day for dialog and reconciliation -- the Norwegian and Danish embassies in Damascus were stormed and set ablaze by protesters angry at the publication of twelve caricatures of the prophet Muhammad. (The demonstrators broke into the Danish embassy building through the ground-floor Chilean embassy. The Swedish embassy, housed in the same building, was severely damaged by the fire.)

First published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, they have now be widely reprinted all over Europe. Yet the Danish presence in the Middle East continues to be a flash-point for anger and violence. Norway, whose flag shares the same 'nordic cross' as Denmark and Sweden, but whose embassy in Syria is in another part of town, appears to have had its embassy attacked on the basis of either aesthetic or geographic confusion. Despite Syrian police erecting a metal barrier around the embassy, protesters broke through and completely destroyed the building, including the personal residences of the ambassador and staff located above the offices.. All of the Norwegian diplomatic personnel are now staying at a hotel.

The spark that started this latest attack was the (apparently unfounded) rumor that Danes were congregating in Rådhusplatsen in Copenhagen to burn Korans. Text messages spread this rumor around Damascus and urged people to protest outside the Danish embassy.

All Norwegian and Danish citizens are now being urged to leave Syria. But Swedes are staying put, for now. Clas Jernaeus, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry (whom I met when he was serving as cultural attaché in New York) said that Muslim groups "made a distinction" between the Dano-Norwegian targets of this attack, and the Swedes, where not to be targeted, during a discussion in Jerusalem. And Syria is the only country in which the three Nordic countries share an embassy building, leading the Swedish Foreign Ministry to gauge the threat level as low.