KABUL, 14 May 2005 — Anger spread in Afghanistan yesterday over a report that US interrogators at Guantanamo Bay had desecrated the Qur’an, and nine people were killed and 30 wounded in protests, police and residents said.
Earlier, religious leaders speaking at weekly Friday prayers told worshippers that protests over the reported desecration of the holy book were justified, but urged Muslims to shun violence. Their words fell on deaf ears as clashes erupted in different parts of the country shortly after prayers ended.
Four policemen and national army soldiers were killed in a gunbattle with anti-US protesters in Ghazni province, 150 km southwest of the capital, residents there said.
Three protesters were killed in the remote northeastern province of Badakhshan, said provincial police chief Shah Jahan Noori. The situation had calmed down but he feared more trouble.
“It’s like a tsunami, anything can happen. It’s difficult to predict,” Noori told Reuters.
“Apart from the three killed, 21 people, including two police, were wounded.” Protesters had damaged several aid agency offices, he said.
Newsweek magazine said in its May 9 edition that investigators probing abuses at the US military prison in Cuba found that interrogators had desecrated the Qur’an to rattle Muslim detainees.
One person was killed in a protest in Badghis province in the northwest and one in Paktia in the southeast, police said.
In all, 16 people have been killed in protests this week. About 100 have been hurt. Police stations, premises of the US-backed government, and UN and aid group offices have been attacked and torched. Early in the week it was college and high school students who took to the streets chanting “Death to America”, denouncing their government and demanding punishment for those they believe desecrated the Qur’an. But they have been joined by older men, many wielding sticks and hurling stones, and some armed.
The United States commands a foreign force in Afghanistan of about 18,300, most of them American, fighting Taleban insurgents and hunting Taleban and Al-Qaeda leaders, including Osama Bin Laden, architect of the Sept. 11 attacks on US cities. But US and other foreign troops have not been involved in policing the protests, leaving that to Afghan authorities.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged Muslims on Thursday to resist calls for violence, saying US military authorities were investigating the allegation. “Disrespect for the Holy Qur’an is abhorrent to us all,” she said.
Preachers at Kabul mosques said it was the people’s right to protest but urged peace. “We respect the Qur’an and support those who demonstrate,” former state President Sibghatullah Mujaddedi told worshippers in Kabul’s main Blue Mosque. “But we want peaceful demonstrations.”
