LAHORE, Feb 26: Police on Sunday rounded up over 600 activists of religious and political parties to restrain them from holding a scheduled rally over the cartoons issue in the city.

The arrests followed sporadic clashes between the police and protesters in various parts of the city, a senior police official said. He admitted that at some places the police had to resort to baton charge and , at one spot, teargas shelling.

Around 15,000 police and hundreds of Rangers had been deployed in the Punjab capital to guard government and foreign installations, markets and public places.

“We had conveyed them (organizers of the rally) that we will not allow them entry even to the proposed venue (of the rally). We did it successfully to uphold the government,” city police chief Khwaja Khalid Farooq said.

A group of over 100 religious activists attempted to hold a demonstration at Imamia Colony in Shahdara. The police canned them when they pelted some vehicles with stones. Around 80 of them were picked up.

Another group of 50 men who gathered in Mozang and tried to march towards The Mall were also arrested.

Operations police chief Aamir Zulfikar Khan, who had sustained injuries during the Feb 14 violence, supervised the entire operation on Sunday. “Our force is ready to respond to any violation of the ban (on rallies),” he told reporters in Anarkali where a clash took place between the police and protesters. The police fired some teargas shells when a group of protesters tried to attack them.

The city gave a deserted look as the law enforcers had been deployed at and around almost all important roads, public places and markets.

Some other groups of activists were intercepted on city’s entry points and taken into custody when they did not agree to return to their cities.

All entry and exit points had been sealed with a heavy deployment of the police commandos and paramilitary forces, who had set up pickets there to check every vehicle entering the city.

The arrested men were shifted to different lock-ups. Registration of cases against them was in process till late night.

Around 400 religious and political activists besides clerics and administrators of some seminaries are already in the city police custody. They were arrested in raids since the Feb 14 loot and plunder in the provincial capital.