6 Killed in Continuing Afghan Protests

At least six people, including three police officers, were slain Friday as anti-American protests in Afghanistan entered their fourth day and spread to the north of the country.

At least 13 have been killed and more than 100 injured since violent demonstrations erupted Tuesday over a media report that U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had desecrated the Koran.

“We were not expecting the north of the country to join in on the protests, but today we had angry mobs attacking aid agencies in Badakhshan,” said Zahir Azimi, spokesman for the Defense Ministry. “Three demonstrators were killed in clashes with local police.”

Demonstrations in the northwestern province of Badghis also came as a surprise to government officials. Reports from the area said that more than 2,000 people rallied in the provincial capital, Qaleh-ye-Now, after attending Friday prayers.

Some reports said that two protesters were killed in Badghis, but government officials could not confirm the deaths.

The protests began Tuesday after Newsweek magazine reported in its May 9 edition that U.S. interrogators at the naval base in Guantanamo had placed copies of the Koran, the Muslim holy book, in bathrooms and flushed a copy down a toilet to demoralize detainees.

Some Afghans have joined the demonstrations to voice their opposition to a long-term U.S. military presence in their country.

Peaceful protests were held elsewhere in the Muslim world Friday, Associated Press reported, with several hundred demonstrators turning out in Pakistan and about 1,500 in the Gaza Strip.

Officials had not expected anti-American demonstrations in northern Afghanistan, with its lower concentrations of ethnic Pushtuns. Most of the U.S. military’s operations against militants have been carried out in the Pushtun-dominated southern Afghanistan, where Taliban and Al Qaeda forces are believed to be hiding.

There were protests in the south too. In the city of Ghazni, about 80 miles southwest of Kabul, angry mobs rushed a police station and the governor’s residence after police officers fired on protesters. Government officials said the head of the police department and two other officers were killed, the first deaths among security forces in the protests.

About 350 protesters in a southern neighborhood of Kabul burned a U.S. flag and shouted “Death to Bush!” Police forces surrounded the crowd within minutes and kept the demonstrators, who were carrying large sticks, from marching into the city center.

“We want our government to do something about the mistreatment of our holy book,” Noor Ahmad, 32, said in Kabul. “We can’t just sit by and allow it to happen.”

Some observers said that President Hamid Karzai, who is touring Europe and plans to travel to Washington to meet with Bush administration officials, has been too quiet on the matter.

“Even though he is not in the country right now, President Karzai should address his people about this issue,” said a source close to the administration. “The government is too weak and unorganized to do this here without him.”

Azimi, the defense spokesman, said his ministry had advised provincial governments to meet with the elders and religious leaders of their areas to discuss the protests.

“We need people to understand that protests are part of their democratic rights, but the violence is only hurting them and destroying whatever gains we have made in reconstruction in the last three years,” Azimi said.

Many Muslim clerics in Kabul reportedly tried to calm tensions during Friday sermons by denouncing the violence.