Pakistan has ordered all Internet Service Providers to block the YouTube website for containing material considered offensive to Islam.
An inter-ministerial committee has decided to block YouTube saying it contains 'blasphemous content, videos and documents', a government official has said.
The site will remain blocked until further notice.
Other officials said the site had been blocked because it contained controversial sketches of the Prophet Mohammed, which were republished by Danish newspapers earlier this month.
One major service provider, Micronet, said in an email to subscribers that the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority had directed all ISPs to block access to YouTube.
'Internet users can write to YouTube.com to remove the objectionable web content/movies because this removal would enable the authorities to order un-blocking of this website,' the email said.
At least 17 Danish newspapers republished the controversial drawing, vowing to defend freedom of expression a day after Danish police said they had foiled a plot to murder the cartoonist.
In the latest in a series of demonstrations over the cartoons in Pakistan, activists from a hardline Islamic organisation burned a Danish flag in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta.
Some 12 cartoons published in September 2005 by Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten sparked bloody riots in the Islamic world.
Five people died in Pakistan in February 2006 during protests against the cartoons, while a Pakistani cleric offered a reward of $1m and a new car for anyone who killed any of the cartoonists.
