More Violence At Afghan Protests

At least seven protesters and a policeman were killed Friday when security forces opened fire during the latest demonstrations to protest the alleged desecration of Islam's holy book by interrogators at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, officials and witnesses said.

The deaths brought to 15 the number killed in the biggest outpouring of anti-American sentiment since the fall of the Taliban in 2001 — a deepening worry for the government of U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai.

Pakistan and Saudi Arabia — both U.S. allies — registered dismay over the allegations of Quran desecration, as did the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference and the outlawed Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

But in Pakistan, a call for mass street protests from a coalition of hardline religious parties fell flat.

Unrest began in Afghanistan on Tuesday after Newsweek magazine reported in its May 9 edition that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, placed Qurans in washrooms to unsettle suspects, and in one case "flushed a holy book down the toilet."

Afghan officials said some of the protesters who took to the streets chanting anti-American slogans and stoning the offices of international relief organizations ignored the urgings of mullahs during Friday prayers to remain calm.

"This is organized by particular groups who are the enemies of Afghanistan," Interior Ministry spokesman Latfullah Mashal told The Associated Press. "They are trying to show that the situation, that security is not good."

In the southeastern city of Ghazni, witnesses said shooting broke out after protesters swarmed toward a police station and the governor's residence after Friday prayers chanting "Death to America" and pelting the buildings with rocks.

Shafiqullah Shafaq, a doctor at the city hospital, told AP that two civilians and a police officer were fatally shot and 21 people wounded, including the provincial police chief. The police official and seven others were brought to Kabul for treatment, Shafaq said.

In northeastern Badakhshan, three men were killed when police fired to control hundreds of protesters in Baharak district, Gov. Abdul Majid told AP. Another 22 people were reported hurt, including three police officers.

Majid said the mob set fire to the office of Focus, a reconstruction agency funded by the Aga Khan Foundation of the spiritual leader of the world's 20 million Ismaili Muslims, and a British aid group.

Another man was killed in the northwest when police opened fire during a demonstration after prayers in Qala-e-Naw, capital of Badghis province, provincial police chief Amir Shah Naibzada told AP.

Four demonstrators suffered bullet wounds in a clash with police and government troops in Gardez, near the Pakistani border, and one died later in hospital, provincial police chief Hay Gul Suleyman Khel said.

A protest in Kabul ended peacefully.

The crackdown on the first major protest in Jalalabad on Tuesday that left four people dead has enflamed passions further, and demonstrations — many of them violent — have taken place in at least 10 towns and cities.