Qur’an Protesters Attack Kabul Compound Housing Foreigners
guardian.co.uk
Afghan protesters throws rocks towards police water cannon near a military base on the outskirts of Kabul, where 11 men were treated for gunshot wounds Photograph: Ahmad Masood/Reuters
Afghan protesters throws rocks towards police water cannon near a military base on the outskirts of Kabul, where 11 men were treated for gunshot wounds Photograph: Ahmad Masood/Reuters
Afghan protestors armed with stones and molotov cocktails have attacked a military base and a compound housing foreign workers in Kabul, in a second day of violence over the burning of copies of the Qur’an by foreign forces.
At least 16 demonstrators and one police officer were injured as enraged crowds took to the streets in central and eastern Afghanistan, shouting “Death to America” and “Death to Obama”.
Police in Kabul used water cannon and fired into the air to control the demonstrators, who were attacking shops and smashing car windows. Security guards in the compound that came under attack also opened fire with automatic rifles.
A military base was attacked on the outskirts of the capital.
Eleven men were treated for gunshot wounds in Kabul, said Kabir Amiri, spokesman for the city’s hospitals. Another five people were injured in eastern Jalalabad, said Ahmad Zia Ahmadzai, spokesman for the provincial governor.
The demonstrations began in the early hours of Tuesday morning, after Afghan workers at the sprawling Bagram airbase spotted copies of the Qur’an among waste paper sent for incineration.
They extinguished the flames and left the base with some of the damaged books, which had been taken from prisoners in a detention centre at Bagram.
A military official, who asked not to be named, said the books had been removed from the jail library because some had added inscriptions that appeared to be in use to “facilitate extremist communications” or were extremist “in and of themselves”.
Nato-led forces rushed to apologise for the burning, which the commander of foreign forces in Afghanistan, General John Allen, described as “not intentional”.
But damage to the Qur’an is a highly sensitive issue in Afghanistan and protests began almost immediately.
“When the Americans insult us to this degree, we will join the insurgents,” said Ajmal, an 18-year-old protester in Kabul told Reuters news agency.
The city’s police chief, Ayoub Salangi, came to the most violent protest in the city to appeal for calm. “I am with you, please cool your temper, I am with you,” he told the crowd, but they turned on him and started throwing stones at his car.
Salangi later told the Guardian that one officer had been injured by protestors who threw stones.
There was a second protest near Kabul university, and three demonstrations - not all violent - in eastern Jalalabad city. Hundreds of Afghans also marched in the streets of central Parwan and Logar provinces, Reuters said.
The US embassy ordered all staff to stay inside their compound, and the UN and many other embassies and foreign aid groups halted movements across Kabul.
“The embassy is on lockdown; all travel suspended. Please, everyone, be safe out there,” the embassy’s official Twitter feed said.
The US defence secretary, Leon Panetta, also issued an apology for “inappropriate treatment” of copies of the Qur’an at the Bagram airbase to try to contain fury over the incident.
Seven foreign UN workers and at least 13 Afghans were killed during protests that raged across Afghanistan for three days in April 2011 after a US pastor burned a Qur’an in Florida.