KABUL, May 14: Afghanistan’s US-backed government was trying to restore order on Saturday after 14 people died in increasingly violent protests against the alleged desecration of the Koran by interrogators at Guantanamo Bay. Anger directed at the United States, which runs the detention centre in Cuba, spread throughout the Muslim world on Friday with Palestinian demonstrators taking to the streets and protests in Pakistan and Indonesia.

Seven Afghans died on Friday alone as security forces and enraged protesters clashed in several towns and cities at both ends of the war-ravaged country. Afghan troops shot dead three people as protesters tried to storm the governor’s house in southern Ghazni province, bringing the number of people killed since Tuesday to 14, officials said.

The police chief of Ghazni was shot in the chest and US forces airlifted him to the capital Kabul for medical treatment where his condition was not known, witnesses and doctors said. Another three died when around 1,000 people took to the streets near Faizabad, capital of the province of Badakshan. Twenty-two people including three policemen were also injured and protesters torched the offices of three foreign aid agencies, provincial officials said.

The army also opened fire on some 300 protesters in the southeastern city of Gardez, killing one and injuring at least three, doctors and officials said.

KARZAI: Afghan president Hamid Karzai accused the “enemies of peace” opposing his country’s alliance with the United States for a series of violent protests.—AFP