Four people were shot dead in clashes with police as anti-US protests spread to more Afghan cities today, officials and witnesses said.
The deaths brought to 11 the number of people killed in the biggest outpouring of anti-American sentiment since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. The protests were sparked by allegations that interrogators at the US prison in Guantanamo Bay desecrated Islam’s holy book, the Quran.
But in neighbouring Pakistan, a call for mass street protests by a hard-line Islamic coalition fell flat, with only a few hundred demonstrators turning out in major cities.
In Baharak district of Afghanistan’s north-eastern Badakhshan province, three men died when police opened fire to control hundreds of protesters who shouted “Death to America!” and attacked the offices of two relief groups, Gov Abdul Majid said. Another 22 people were hurt, including three police officers, he said.
Another man died in the far north-west when police opened fire during a demonstration in Qala-e-Naw, capital of Badghis province, provincial police chief Amir Shah Naibzada said.
Further south, more than 200 protesters marched through the city of Gardez, Interior Ministry spokesman Latfullah Mashal said. Demonstrators broke the windows of cars and shops, but there were no reports of casualties.
Hundreds of people also gathered in the centre of Ghazni city, witnesses said. Local officials confirmed there was a protest, but declined to give details.
Meanwhile, firebrand Muslim clerics in Pakistan lashed out at the US today over the alleged desecration of the Quran, but few people showed up for protests.
The rallies, which were peaceful, followed days of protests and riots in neighbouring Afghanistan that have claimed at least seven lives.
A hard-line opposition Islamic coalition, Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal, or MMA, had appealed for Muslims to protest in major cities after Friday prayers, but in Islamabad, Lahore, Peshawar, Quetta, Multan and Karachi no more than a few hundred turned out.
“By insulting the Quran, they have challenged our belief. We are hurt ... If we don’t rise against Americans, if we don’t give them a strong message today, they will do it again,” cleric Hafiz Hussain Ahmad, an MMA leader, told worshippers at a mosque in Islamabad.
He also urged people to prepare themselves for a jihad, or holy war.
Speaking to about 150 supporters in Islamabad, MMA chief Qazi Hussain Ahmed branded Pakistan’s President General Pervez Musharraf a “dog” – considered a serious slur in Islamic culture – for his alliance with Washington in the war on terrorism.
Clerics in other cities also strongly criticised the US government in their sermons at prayers. Pakistani government and opposition politicians weighed in with more criticism in Parliament – but the fiery rhetoric stirred little public interest.
Protests have broken out since Tuesday, when students burned an effigy of US President George Bush in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad 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.”
Many of the 520 inmates at Guantanamo are Muslims arrested during the US-led war against terror in Afghanistan. In both Afghanistan and Pakistan, insults to the Quran and Islam’s prophet, Muhammad, are regarded as blasphemy and punishable by death.
“We think President George Bush has started a crusade war by insulting Quran,” hard-line cleric Anwar ul-Haq told a congregation at the main mosque in the south-western Pakistan city of Quetta.
He warned that people would be forced to take “extreme steps against American citizens in the world” if any Guantanamo Bay-like incident was repeated in future.
But Sadique Bajrani, a cleric at a mosque in southern city of Karachi, while condemning abuse of the Quran, urged people to remain peaceful. “Americans did a bad thing, but you should not hurt anyone while protesting against America,” he said.
Pakistan had stepped up security ahead of the rallies, and the United Nations closed its offices across Pakistan early as a precaution. There were no reports of violence.
In Washington yesterday, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said disrespect for the Quran would never be tolerated in the US and that military authorities were investigating the allegations.