Koran, clashes and one dead in Kandahar

Obama: “Burning act of intolerance”

KABUL – One dead and 16 injured in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan, on the second consecutive day of protests against the burning of the Koran. Hundreds of people took to the streets to protest the provocative gesture of a Florida shepherd, in the stone-throwing that followed dozens of people were injured, two of them seriously, and one was killed. Saturday in the former Taliban stronghold there were 10 dead and about eighty wounded after the police prevented the crowd from reaching the UN offices and the governor’s headquarters. The previous day, after Friday prayers, the crowd attacked the UN headquarters, killing four Nepalese guards and three Western workers.

The American president, Barack Obama, condemned the burning of the Koran, calling it “an act of extreme intolerance and bigotry”. “However,” he said in a statement released by the White House on Friday’s assault on the UN headquarters in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, “attacking and killing innocent people in response is a wicked act.” The violence was triggered by the gesture of extremist preacher Wayne Sapp who burned a copy of the book on March 21st sacred of Muslims in a Florida church. “No religion”, underlined Obama, “tolerates the massacre and the beheading of innocents and there is no justification for such a dishonorable and deplorable act”. “Now”, he added, “it is time to tap into the humanity that unites us and that was witnessed by the UN workers who lost their lives trying to help the Afghan people”.

(03 April 2011)