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Afghans shouted anti-US slogans Friday during a protest in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, against a planned Koran-burning in Florida. (Rahmat Gul/ Associated Press) Five Afghan protesters were wounded, three of them critically, when hundreds of men tried to force their way onto a NATO reconstruction base at Faisabad, capital of Badakshan Province in northern Afghanistan, according to civilian authorities.
Muhammad Amin, a spokesman for the provincial governor, said four Afghan security officers were also wounded, but he said that earlier reports that a protester had been shot to death proved false.
Aga Noor Kentooz, the provincial police commander in Faisabad, said four people were wounded by shots fired from inside the base when a mob tried to force its way in.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force disputed the reports.
“All of our reporting is saying that no ISAF forces have fired anything,’’ Captain Ryan Donald, a spokesman, said.
He said there were also reports of shots fired at another Koran-burning protest, at Bala Buluk in Farah Province in western Afghanistan, where Polish forces run a Provincial Reconstruction Team base, though again it was not confirmed who had done so.
Both Afghan officials’ accounts said the trouble came after several thousand people left morning prayers for the Eid al-Fitr holiday and attended a peaceful demonstration against the plans for the Koran burning. Although the Florida pastor, Terry Jones, said Thursday that he had canceled plans to stage the event today, in commemoration of 9/11, his subsequent comments left it unclear if he planned to go ahead or not.
After the demonstration in Faisabad broke up, groups of several hundred young men, both on foot and piled into automobiles, stormed toward Airport Road and the NATO reconstruction team base, which is staffed by German soldiers who are part of the NATO-led international force.
After overpowering Afghan security forces on the outer wall of the compound, the crowd, armed with sticks and throwing rocks, tried to storm the inner wall, the Afghan officials said.
Kentooz said “foreign security forces’’ inside the base then fired warning shots, and when that failed to work they fired into the crowd.
The director of the Public Health Hospital in Faisabad, Abdul Mohmin Jalali, said five civilians were admitted there with gunshot wounds; one was treated and released, and three of the four who remained in the hospital were in critical condition.
“We heard reports that there were more casualties and possibly someone killed, but we don’t know as yet,’’ Jalali said.
General David H. Petraeus, the NATO commander in Afghanistan, has warned that plans for the Koran-burning put coalition troops at risk, and President Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates called on the Florida pastor not to go ahead with his planned action.
Elsewhere in Afghanistan, there were scattered reports of demonstrations against the Koran-burning in Kabul, as well as in Bamyan and Kapisa, but they were small and mostly peaceful.
President Hamid Karzai, in a message issued for the Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan, called on Mullah Muhammad Omar, the leader of the Taliban insurgents fighting his government, to join the peace process.
Mullah Omar’s Eid message was uncompromising, boasting that US forces were on the verge of leaving Afghanistan, and ignoring calls for peace talks.
The president’s remarks came after prayers for Eid at the mosque on the presidential palace grounds and a statement from his office said, “The president once again called on Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban, and other angry Afghans, to honor Eid by joining the peace process and stop killing our brothers and harming civilians.’’
Karzai also criticized the plans to burn the Koran.
“Disrespect to this holy book will not harm this book because the Koran is in every Muslim’s heart and mind,’’ he said. “I hope these people will stop this disrespect.’’
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