A children's show airing on Al-Aqsa, a television station owned by Palestinian government party Hamas, has allowed one of its characters to promote the assassination of a Mohammed cartoonist.

In an episode of the children's programme 'The Pioneers of Tomorrow', the show's large pink rabbit Assud said he would 'bite and eat' Danes and that Hamas would kill them if they insulted the prophet Mohammed again.

Assud and his sidekick, 12-year-old Saraa, initiated a call-in on the show in which a child was asked what should be done about the cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, who drew Mohammed with a bomb in his turban for the original cartoon publication.  The cartoons were recently reprinted in 17 Danish newspapers.

The child caled Westergaard a 'criminal' and said that he should be killed. Assud replied that such is Allah's will.  The episode ended with the motto: 'We hope all will be martyrs for Allah's sake.'

The show airs regularly on Al-aqsa and is broadcast throughout the Gaza area of Israel and Egypt.  Westergaard was troubled by the threat.

'It scares me that Muslim children are subjected to this type of propoganda,' he said. 'I don't understand how one can use hate in the name of education.'

But Ehab Galal, of the University of Copenhagen, urged caution.

'These comments are not necessarily meant as severe as they sound to us Danes,' said Galal. 'Palestinians grow up under extremely hard conditions and they express themselves in a different way.'

Earlier this month three men were arrested in Århus for plotting to kill Westergaard.