More Dead In Anti-U.S. Protests

(AP)  At least three more anti-U.S. protesters were killed Thursday in clashes with police, officials said, as rage over the reported abuse of Islam's holy book at the U.S. jail in Guantanamo Bay spread across the country.

Police opened fire on hundreds of demonstrators in Khogyani, a town in eastern Nangarhar province, to prevent them from staging a demonstration, local police chief Maj. Gul Wali said.

Wali said three protesters died and one was wounded.

However, Interior Ministry spokesman Latufallah Mashal said only two people died in Khogyani.

Mashal said a third protester died in a separate clash with police in Wardak province, south of the capital, Kabul.

Earlier, protesters also attacked a government outpost and the offices of two international relief organizations to the south of Kabul, injuring one aid worker and leaving a trail of destruction, an aid worker and an official said.

The unrest came a day after riots in an eastern city left four people dead in the worst anti-American protests in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. On Thursday, protests spread to the capital and into Pakistan as Afghan students burned an American flag and shouted slogans against the U.S. military.

While most of the protesters appeared to be students, officials have suggested that elements opposed to the country's U.S.-backed re-emergence were stirring the violence, which has also targeted the United Nations and American troops.

"It's the symbols of this change in Afghanistan" that have been singled out," said Paul Barker, director of CARE International, one of the largest international relief groups in Afghanistan. "There are probably people around the country inciting this."

Barker said a group of high school students assailed the CARE office in Mohammed Agha district of Logar province on Thursday morning, beating one staff member and destroying equipment. The office of another foreign relief group next door was set on fire.

Logar Gov. Amanullah Hamimi said protesters also broke the windows of the local government office and that unidentified men had destroyed a nearby mobile phone mast with rockets during the night.

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