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KABUL, May 13: Angry protests raged across the Muslim world from Gaza to Indonesia on Friday over a report that US interrogators at Guantanamo Bay had desecrated the holy Quran, with calls for retaliation and a rising death toll. Governments demanded investigation and thousands took to the streets in outrage over the Newsweek magazine report that interrogators at the US military prison in Cuba were showing disrespect to the holy book.
In Afghanistan, at least nine people were killed in demonstrations on Friday, bringing the country’s death toll to 16 this week in its worst anti-American demonstrations since the fall of the Taliban.
Hundreds of people held a peaceful protest in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation. In Gaza, several thousand Palestinians marched through a refugee camp in a protest organized by the Hamas. Several hundred Palestinians also marched in the West Bank city of Hebron.
“The holy Quran was defiled by the dirtiest of hands, by American hands,” a protester shouted at the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza, where US and Israeli flags were also burned.
The escalating violence prompted US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to urge Muslims to resist calls for violence, saying US military authorities were investigating the report. “Disrespect for the holy Quran is abhorrent to us all,” she said on Thursday.
The Indonesian government said those responsible must receive a ‘deserved punishment’ for their action. The Saudi government said it was following the issue with ‘deep indignation’.
Sentiments ran higher in the streets.
“Demonstrations serve no purpose, we should do something practical. I am ready to blow myself up for the sake of my religion to embrace martyrdom,” said Mohammad Ghafoor, 18, a student protesting in Peshawar. Washington is holding more than 500 prisoners from its ‘war on terrorism’ at the naval base on Cuba, many of them detained in Afghanistan after the Sept 11, 2001, attacks.
AFGHANISTAN: The report prompted the worst anti-US protests across that fragmented country since Americans invaded to topple the Taliban rulers.
Religious leaders told worshipers at Friday prayers that protests over the desecration of the holy book were justified.
They urged Muslims to shun violence, but their words fell on deaf ears as clashes erupted in different parts of the country, claiming at least nine lives, most those of protesters shot by police.
About 100 people have been injured there in days of protests, and police stations, UN and aid group offices and government premises have been ransacked and torched.—Reuters
