Associated Press

Kabul, May 11:

Afghan police and US troops today opened fire to control hundreds of rioting students angered at alleged abuse of the Quran at the US jail in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, killing two protesters and injuring another 40, officials said.

Shooting broke out in the eastern city of Jalalabad as demonstrators smashed the windows of cars and shops and threw stones at a passing convoy of American soldiers. Mobs also broke into UN compounds and burned two cars.

At one point, officials said students chanting “Death to America” and “Death to Bush” threw stones at a group of American military vehicles.

An Associated Press Television News cameraman said the crowds grew larger and wilder after the firing. Mobs pelted a government office and the local television station with rocks and tore down posters of president Hamid Karzai.

Deputy health chief Mohammed Ayub Shinwari said two protesters were killed and 40 injured.

Students held peaceful protests in cities in Laghman province and Khost, further to the south, suggesting the protests were coordinated.

The demonstrations began yesterday, when protesters burned an effigy of US president George W Bush over a report in Newsweek magazine that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay placed Qurans on toilets in order to rattle suspects, and in at least one case “flushed a holy book down the toilet.” US State Department spokesman Tom Casey described the reported desecration as “reprehensible.”

The US is holding about 520 people at Guantanamo Bay, many of them Al Qaeda and Taliban suspects captured in Pakistan and Afghanistan following the September 11 attacks.

Karzai wants NATO to stay on

BRUSSELS: Afghan President Hamid Karzai urged the NATO and the international community on Wednesday to maintain their presence in Afghanistan after parliamentary elections in September to reinforce democracy and security in the country. “My request to you today is that you continue to stay with us after the parliamentary elections because if you don’t do that you will leave the work half way undone,” he told the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s governing political body. “It will take our country many years before we can stand on our own feet in real terms,” he added, speaking at the military alliance’s headquarters here. More than 10.5 million voters were expected to vote on September 18 to elect the 249-seat lower house known as the Wolesi Jirga. — AFP