World

Koran Burning kills Nine in Afghanistan

by Amitjha | January 12, 2010 at 10:21 pm

165 views | 14 Recommendations | 3 comments

When you are in foreign land doing some peace opeartion you have to take care of local sentiment, this statement is more important when it comes to religious sentiment. It seems NATO led force in Afghanistan have forgot the basic rule.
The allegation by local people says that NATO led force burned the koran in one such peace operation in provincial town. The protest and its supression cost nine live.

Nine people were killed when shooting broke out during a mass demonstration in a provincial Afghan town over the alleged

burning of a Koran by foreign troops, police said Wednesday.

The violence erupted on Tuesday in the Garmsir district of the southern province of Helmand over rumours that NATO-led forces had defiled a copy of the Muslim holy book during a military operation, local residents and police said.

"Eight protesters were killed when the protesters attacked national security officials in Garmsir," deputy provincial police chief Khamal Dinkhan said.

The shooting of the protesters occurred after an Afghan national guardsman was killed by gunfire "from the demonstrators' side," he said.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement on Tuesday that its troops had shot dead an "insurgent sniper" who had shot an Afghan official in the Garmsir area.

But a spokesman for the force said there was no information to back up claims of civilian deaths in the incident, adding that investigations with Afghan security officials were under way.

A doctor at the emergency hospital in the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that more than 10 people had been brought in "with gunshot wounds to the stomach, head and legs".