Cartoon protest death toll up
2006-02-08 11:33
Qalat - Four people were killed on Wednesday during new protests in Afghanistan against cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, the army said, taking the death toll from five days of demonstrations to 11.
The latest deaths occurred as protestors and police clashed in Qalat, the capital of southern Zabul province, while new demonstrations were held in the national capital Kabul and in the eastern province of Nangarhar.
The continuing unrest in Afghanistan comes despite a joint call by the United Nations, European Union and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference for restraint and dialogue in the row over the drawings.
In Qalat about 400 protestors hurled stones as they tried to storm the police headquarters, before moving to a US-led military coalition base where they torched four fuel tankers, witnesses and an army commander said.
A provincial official said police had opened fire to control the crowd while witnesses said coalition troops had fired into the air.
"Eleven protestors have been wounded. Four protestors have died. One national army soldier is also seriously wounded. A number of police are also wounded," Afghan National Army brigade commander Abdul Razaq told AFP.
Several police were injured in the stone-throwing and forty protesters were arrested, provincial spokesman Gulab Shah Ali Khail told AFP.
Separately about 1 500 people demonstrated in eastern Nangarhar province on Wednesday, a district official told AFP. They blocked a highway but dispersed peacefully.
In Kabul about 200 men torched the flag of Denmark, where the cartoons first appeared in September. They chanted, "Death to Denmark, Death to America," before dispersing.
Meanwhile British Nato troops patrolled the northwestern city of Maymana after being rushed there as reinforcements on Tuesday, when demonstrators attacked a camp for a reconstruction team run by Norwegian peacekeepers.
Maymana was quiet overnight after Tuesday's rioting in which four Afghans were killed.
Five Norwegian soldiers were lightly wounded on Tuesday by stones thrown by the mob as well as fragments from a hand-grenade, ISAF spokesperson Squadron Leader Annie Gibson-Sexton said.
British forces were securing the airport and helping local police to patrol the town, she said. They could be there from "a few days to a couple of weeks," she said.
It was unclear how the deaths occurred. Witnesses alleged that some of the demonstrators and police had opened fire and that shots also came from the compound. ISAF said its troops had only fired into the air.
The peacekeeping force has been helping to stablise this war-torn country after the removal of the harsh Taliban government four years ago. Around 20 000 US-led troops are also in Afghanistan to hunt down militants.
- AFP