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Title: Gunfire Erupts as Afghans Protest for Fourth Day Over U.S. Koran Burning
Source:
Bloomberg
URL Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012- ... oran-at-main-u-s-air-base.html
Published: Feb 24, 2012
Author: Eltaf Najafizada
Post Date: 2012-02-24 11:12:00 by Brian S
Keywords: None
Views: 1739
Comments: 2
Street demonstrations continued in Afghanistan for a fourth day over the burning of the Koran, the Islamic scripture, at the country’s main U.S. air base. While gunfire erupted in some towns, officials confirmed no new deaths by early evening. At least 12 Afghans and soldiers of the U.S.-led coalition force have been killed in the protests. In the northern town of Pul-e-Khumri, Afghan police and Hungarian soldiers fired on a crowd of hundreds of men who besieged the local base of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, said Ahmad Besharat, the provincial police chief. “There might have been casualties but we cannot yet confirm that because the protest is still going on,” he said in a phone interview. A German defense ministry spokesman said the protests prompted Germany today to withdraw its troops from a small base in the northern province of Takhar that it had planned to vacate in about a month, the Associated Press reported from Berlin. The troops moved to a larger German base in the nearby province of Kunduz. The BBC reported protests in at least nine of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, reflecting a widening of the turmoil since a first demonstration on Feb. 21 outside the U.S. airbase at Bagram, where the Korans were thrown into piles of burning trash. The U.S. embassy has restricted movements by its staff since the protests began. While the embassy has reported no casualties among American civilians, two U.S. soldiers were shot yesterday by a man in an Afghan army uniform, said Ahmed Zia Abdulzai, the government spokesman in the eastern province of Nangarhar. It was unclear whether they were the two soldiers whose deaths were confirmed by ISAF. Today’s protests came after President Barack Obama wrote to Afghan President Hamid Karzai yesterday to express regret for the damage to the Korans, a sensitive issue in Afghanistan. “I extend to you and the Afghan people my sincere apologies,” Obama wrote, according to a statement from Karzai’s office. Taliban leaders yesterday issued a statement urging Afghans to ignore U.S. apologies and step up attacks against Americans. Karzai has appealed for calm, asking people to await the outcome of the investigation. While an ISAF officer, German Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson, told reporters the force hoped to issue an account as early as yesterday on how the incident unfolded, it has reported no results of its investigation. The violence is the second time in a year that riots have erupted across Afghanistan over the perceived desecration of the Koran by Americans. The burning of a Koran by a pastor in Florida in March led to four days of riots in which 24 people died, including two U.S. soldiers shot by an Afghan policeman. The U.S.-led force in Afghanistan and other westerners often underestimate the reverence of Afghans and other Muslims for the Koran, according to Sultan Shahin, an Indian analyst who runs New Age Islam, a website on Muslim and interfaith affairs. ISAF’s commander, U.S. Marine General John Allen, has ordered training for all troops in “the proper handling of religious materials.”
Karzai Appeal
Florida Pastor
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#1. To: Brian S, *Neo-Lib Chickenhawk Wars* (#0)
Bring the troops home so that they can burn Koran's in the US.
Obama's watch stopped on 24 May 2008, but he's been too busy smoking crack to notice.
Why not burn some Bibles to demonstrate it doesn't mean a thing ! Just print some more !
If you ... don't use exclamation points --- you should't be typeing ! Commas - semicolons - question marks are for girlie boys !
"We (government) need to do a lot less, a lot sooner" ~Ron Paul
#2. To: Brian S (#0)
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