KANDAHAR – Two policemen were killed and more than 30 people wounded in the southern city of Kandahar yesterday during the third day of protests across Afghanistan against the burning of a Koran by a militant fundamentalist Christian US pastor, officials said.
Violence at earlier demonstrations claimed more than 20 lives. Ten people were killed and more than 80 wounded in Kandahar on Saturday.
Seven foreign UN staff and five Afghan protesters were killed on Friday after demonstrators overran an office in normally peaceful Mazar-i-Sharif city in the north.
A senior interior ministry investigator said the killers of the UN staff appear to have been “reintegrated” Taliban – fighters who had formally laid down arms – although the insurgents have denied any role in the attack.
Over 30 people have been arrested, from areas as far afield as southern Kandahar, western Herat and central Baghlan province, said Munir Ahmad Farhad, a spokesman for the provincial governor.
With little sign of widespread anger fading, the governor also issued an order banning sermons which might “provoke the public.” The violence in Mazar began after Friday prayers, some of them harshly critical of the West.
In Kandahar yesterday, hundreds of people marched towards another UN office, again denouncing the actions of US preacher Terry Jones, who supervised the burning of a Koran in front of about 50 people at a church in Gainesville, Florida on March 20th.
There have been peaceful demonstrations in Kabul, Herat city, Jalalabad city in the east and northern Tahar province.
But anger unleashed on Saturday when protesters waved white Taliban flags, shouted “death to America”, burned tyres, smashed shops and vandalised a girls’ school returned to the city.
Western political and military leaders, including US President Barack Obama and the top US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, Gen David Petraeus, have condemned the Koran burning.
Afghan president Hamid Karzai, who last week drew Afghan public attention to the burning, an event that initially gained little media coverage, on Sunday called on the US Houses of Congress to join in the condemnation and prevent a repeat incident.
“The desecration of any holy text, including the Koran, is an act of extreme intolerance and bigotry,” Obama said in a statement released by the White House.
Yesterday, Gen Petraeus joined the condemnation voiced by many other leaders, urging Afghans to understand that only a small number of people had been disrespectful to the Koran and Islam.
“We condemn, in particular, the action of an individual in the United States who recently burned the Holy Koran,” the general said in a statement, which was also signed by Nato’s senior civilian representative, ambassador Mark Sedwill.
About 1,000 people blocked the main highway from Kabul to Jalalabad earlier on Sunday and burned US flags.
“We want the preacher who burnt the Holy Koran to get a severe punishment,” said 20-year-old protester Jalil Ahmad. “He is not a human being, he is a brain-dead animal.”
In an interview with Reuters on Saturday, Jones was unrepentant and defiantly vowed to lead an anti-Islam protest outside the biggest mosque in the United States later this month. The Taliban said in a statement yesterday that Afghans were still ready to give their lives to protest against an offence that it said the West was not taking seriously.
“The US government should have punished the perpetrators, but the American authorities and those in other countries not only did not have a serious reaction, but defended to some extent in the name of freedom of religion and speech,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement. – (Reuters)
