Afghan students burned an American flag and shouted slogans against the US military yesterday, as protests at reported abuse of Islam's holy book at the US jail in Guantanamo Bay spread to the capital.
A day after riots in an eastern city left four people dead, more than 200 young men marched from a dormitory block near Kabul University chanting "Death to America!" and carrying banners including one stating: "Those who insult the Koran should be brought to justice."
At the entrance to the university, a man with a clipped beard and spectacles read a resolution calling on US President George W. Bush to apologize and opposing long-term US military bases in Afghanistan.
PHOTO: AFP
About two dozen students clambered onto the roof of nearby building and burned a US flag to applause and cries of "God is great!" from the crowd below. Dozens of police -- some armed with sticks, others with rifles -- looked on.
Ahmad Shah, a political sciences undergraduate, said the students had decided to protest after hearing of the deaths on Wednesday.
"America is our enemy and we don't want them in Afghanistan," Shah said as the students ended their protest and returned to classes on Thursday morning. "When they insult our holy book they have insulted us."
Police said 150 students staged a similar brief demonstration at another high school in the city, but reported no violence.
On Wednesday, police and government troops opened fire in the eastern city of Jalalabad after a protest by more than 1,000 people turned into a riot and the biggest outpouring of anger at the US since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
Four people were reported killed and 71 wounded, including six police officers. Government buildings and the offices of several relief organizations were looted and burned. The city was quiet yesterday.
Peaceful demonstrations have been reported in at least four other Afghan provinces.
The source of anger was a brief report in the May 9 edition of Newsweek magazine that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, placed Korans on toilets in order to rattle suspects, and in at least one case "flushed a holy book down the toilet."
Hardline Islamic parties in neighboring Pakistan have called for protests today. The Pakistani government said at the weekend it was "deeply dismayed" over the report, which Pentagon and White House officials said would be investigated.
Many of the 520 inmates in Guantanamo are Pakistanis and Afghans captured after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who travels to Washington later this month to seek long-term American military and economic aid, has called repeatedly for all the Afghan prisoners to be sent home.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS