At Least 12 Killed During Koran-Burning Protest at UN Office in Afghanistan

[Jeanfromfillmore]

At Least 12 Killed During Koran-Burning Protest at UN Office in Afghanistan
KABUL, Afghanistan — Demonstrators incensed at the burning of a Koran by a Florida pastor opened fire on a United Nations office Friday in northern Afghanistan, killing 12 people, including three foreign UN workers and five Nepalese UN guards, officials said.
Two of the foreign dead reportedly were beheaded, Reuters reported.
The other four dead were protesters, the Associated Press reported.
"We can confirm an attack on the UN mission in Afghanistan's operations center in Mazar-i-Sharif, and can confirm that there have been deaths of UN personnel," deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said at UN headquarters in New York. "The situation is still confusing and we are working to ascertain all the facts and take care of all our staff."
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon's special representative in Afghanistan, Staffan De Mistura, was "on his way to Mazar-i-Sharif now to deal with the situation personally on the ground," AFP reported.
The rampage began when demonstrators marched in Mazar-i-Sharif and in the capital Kabul on Friday to protest the burning last month of Islam's holy book by Florida pastors Terry Jones and Wayne Sapp. Jones reportedly put the Koran "trial," then supervised Sapp as he burned the book.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the burning, and called on the U.S. to bring those responsible to justice.
Jones captured headlines last September when he threatened to burn the Koran on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. Jones canceled the burning after appeals from several world leaders, including President Obama.
Jones, meanwhile, issued a statement Friday, calling on President Obama to "take a close, realistic look at the radical element Islam... It is time that we call these people to accountability."
Last month's Koran burning also was blamed for an attack earlier this week on a Catholic church in Pakistan. Government officials said the attack was directly related to the Koran burning, but Msgr. Anthony Rufin, bishop of Islamabad, would not link the two incidents.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/04...#ixzz1IILHrPOk

[Twoller]

Remember the last time we discussed this here?

http://www.saveourstate.info/search.php?searchid=10780

I'm glad to hear the pastor finally got around to flicking his bic.

[ilbegone]

Originally Posted by Twoller

Remember the last time we discussed this here?

http://www.saveourstate.info/search.php?searchid=10780

I'm glad to hear the pastor finally got around to flicking his bic.

To what end?

[Jeanfromfillmore]

Pastor Unbowed, Vows New Anti-Islam Protest
GAINESVILLE, Fla. (Reuters) - A militant fundamentalist Christian preacher in Florida whose burning of a Quran triggered deadly riots in Afghanistan was unrepentant Saturday and defiantly vowed to lead an anti-Islam protest outside the biggest mosque in the United States.
The planned demonstration could further inflame tensions over the Quran burning, which led to two days of protests in Afghanistan that included the killings of U.N. staff and stoked anti-Western sentiment in parts of the Muslim world.
"Our aim is to make an awareness of the radical element of Islam," Pastor Terry Jones told Reuters in an interview at the church he leads in the college town of Gainesville, Florida. A picture of the burning Quran was on his computer screen.
"Obviously it is terrible any time people are murdered or killed. I think that on the other hand, it shows the radical element of Islam."
Jones, a former hotel manager turned pastor who claims the Quran incites violence, said he will go ahead with a protest on April 22 in front of the largest mosque in the United States, located in Dearborn, Michigan.
President Barack Obama denounced the act of burning a Quran but did not mention Jones by name.
"The desecration of any holy text, including the Quran, is an act of extreme intolerance and bigotry," Obama said in a statement released by the White House Saturday. "However, to attack and kill innocent people in response is outrageous, and an affront to human decency and dignity."
Jones provoked an international outcry last year over his plan to burn copies of the Quran on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
He backed down after pleas from the U.S. government and other world officials, but then presided over a March 20 mock trial of the Quran that included a torching of the book. It barely drew media attention but Internet footage reverberated across the Muslim world.

FREE SPEECH
A range of Christian and U.S. Muslim leaders have condemned Jones and his small Dove World Outreach Center church, which reportedly has a congregation of around 30 members.
"One of the great tragedies of all this is that a tiny fringe church can cause such an uproar," said Geoff Tunnicliffe, director of the World Evangelical Alliance International, which groups together evangelical churches in more than 100 countries.
"My question to him is, 'Why would you want to provoke people to this kind of response, knowing this was probably going to be the outcome?"'
Government officials in Pakistan and Afghanistan have called for U.S. authorities to arrest Jones. However, his public criticism of Islam and desecration of the Quran are allowed under U.S. laws protecting free speech.
Jones defended the Quran burning and said the reaction in Afghanistan "shows exactly what we're talking about."
"If my neighbor offends me, it does not give me the right to break into his house and kill him," he told Reuters.
He said he has received several hundred death threats since he first talked of burning the Quran last September, leading him to carry a handgun and take shooting classes.
Safety concerns at the church have driven away most of the churchgoers, he said. "We have seen a drop-off."
He did not say whether he intended to burn another Quran during the upcoming protest, which he said should not be viewed as an attack against all Muslims.
"To the peaceful Muslim that lives down the street, we are sorry if our actions have offended them, which I am sure it has. But at the same we are not trying to attack them," he said. "We are trying to make it very clear that we are against this radical element," he added.

http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/T...mo_code=C02C-1

[Jeanfromfillmore]

Quran Protests Spread to Turbulent Afghan East
JALALABAD, Afghanistan - Demonstrators battled police in southern Afghanistan's main city on Sunday and took to the streets in the turbulent east for the first time as Western pleas failed to halt a third day of rage over a Florida pastor's burning of the Quran.

An officer was shot dead in a second day of clashes in the city of Kandahar, said provincial health director Qayum Pokhla. Two officers and 18 civilians were wounded, he said.

In Jalalabad, the largest city in the east, hundreds of people blocked the main highway for three hours, shouting for U.S. troops to leave, burning an effigy of President Barack Obama and stomping on a drawing of a U.S. flag. More than 1,000 people set tires ablaze to block another highway in eastern Parwan province for about an hour, said provincial police chief Sher Ahmad Maladani. The violence was set off by anger over the March 20 burning of the Quran by a Florida church - the same church whose pastor had threatened to do so last year on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, triggering worldwide outrage.

The protests, which began Friday, also appear to be fueled more broadly by the resentment that has been building for years in Afghanistan over the operations of Western military forces, blamed for killing and mistreating civilians, and international contractors, seen by many as enriching themselves and fueling corruption at the expense of ordinary Afghans.

Coverage of the trial of a group of U.S. soldiers charged with killing Afghan civilians and the publication of photos of some posing with dead bodies added to the anger. Thousands of demonstrators in the previously peaceful northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif poured into the streets after Friday's Muslim prayer services and overran a U.N. compound, killing three U.N. staff members and four Nepalese guards.

On Saturday, hundreds of Afghans holding copies of the Quran over their heads marched in Kandahar before attacking cars and businesses. Security forces opened fire and nine protesters were killed but the governor of Kandahar said officers had only fired into the air. He said 81 were wounded and 17 people, including seven armed men, had been arrested.
Military commander Gen. David Petraeus and the top NATO civilian representative in Afghanistan, Mark Sedwill, said they "hope the Afghan people understand that the actions of a small number of individuals, who have been extremely disrespectful to the holy Quran, are not representative of any of the countries of the international community who are in Afghanistan to help the Afghan people."

The Taliban said in a statement emailed to media outlets that the U.S. and other Western countries had wrongly excused the burning of the Quran as freedom of speech and that Afghans "cannot accept this un-Islamic act."

"Afghan forces under the order of the foreign forces attacked unarmed people during the protests, killing them and arresting some, saying there were armed people among these protesters, which was not true," the Taliban said.

The governor of Kandahar said he and the main leaders of the protests in the southern city had reached an agreement that would end the demonstrations in exchange for the release of those who were arrested. He said they released 25 people but did not provide details. http://www.aolnews.com/2011/04/03/qu...ter-third-day/

[Jeanfromfillmore]

Afghanistan: Koran protests in Kandahar and Jalalabad
At least one person has been killed and 18 injured in a third day of protests in Afghanistan over the burning of a Koran in the US last month.
Hundreds of demonstrators marched in Kandahar, Jalalabad and other areas on Sunday.
On Friday, 14 people, including seven UN staff, were killed in Mazar-e Sharif after similar protests.
US President Barack Obama described the killings as "outrageous" and the Koran burning as "intolerance and bigotry".
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has called on the US Congress to condemn the Koran burning and prevent it from happening again.
A statement from his office said Mr Karzai made the request at a meeting with Gen David Petraeus, the commander of international forces in Afghanistan.
Ten people in Kandahar died and dozens were injured following Saturday's protests.
Protests spread
On Sunday, demonstrators in Kandahar city - the birthplace of the Taliban - marched on the main UN office.
At least one person was killed when a gas canister exploded in Kandahar.
Interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary said the canister was in a traffic police booth which was set alight by protesters, the AFP news agency reported.
Smaller protests were also reported in two other districts of Kandahar province, and in Parwan province, north of the capital, Kabul.
There are conflicting reports that at least one other person may have been killed, but it is not clear at which protest. At least 18 people were injured.
In the eastern city of Jalalabad, hundreds of demonstrators peacefully blocked a main road for three hours on Sunday.
The crowd shouted for US troops to leave Afghanistan and burnt an effigy of Mr Obama, according to an Associated Press photographer at the scene.
The UN's chief envoy to Afghanistan, Staffan de Mistura, blamed Friday's violence in the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif on the Florida pastor who burnt the Koran on 20 March.
"I don't think we should be blaming any Afghan," Mr de Mistura said. "We should be blaming the person who produced the news - the one who burned the Koran. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from offending culture, religion, traditions."(That is exactly what freedom of speech is in the US, you're not protected from being offended, that's our freedom to speak)
He said the UN would temporarily redeploy 11 staff members to Kabul while their office in Mazar-e Sharif was rebuilt but there would be no evacuation.
In a statement published on Saturday evening, Mr Obama extended his condolences to the families of those killed by the protesters in Afghanistan.
"The desecration of any holy text, including the Koran, is an act of extreme intolerance and bigotry," he said. "However, to attack and kill innocent people in response is outrageous, and an affront to human decency and dignity."
Regional police commander Dawood Dawood told the BBC that the UN guards killed on Friday had not reacted quickly enough.
"They didn't fire when they should have. But they also didn't allow the Afghan National Police to guard the UN building from the inside," he said.
Condemnation
The controversy began in Florida on 20 March, when Pastor Wayne Sapp soaked a Koran in kerosene, staged a "trial" during which the Islamic holy book was found guilty of "crimes against humanity", and then set it alight.
The incident took place under the supervision of Pastor Terry Jones, who last year drew condemnation over his aborted plan to burn copies of the Koran on the anniversary of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US.
The authorities in both Kandahar and Mazar-e Sharif have blamed the Taliban for the violence. However, the Taliban has rejected the accusation.
Pastor Jones has said that the Dove World Outreach Center's congregation does not "feel responsible" for the attack.
The protests began in Mazar-e Sharif on Friday, when protesters marched on the UN compound.
Several demonstrators were killed by guards at the compound, who were then overpowered by the mob.
Munir Ahmad Farhad, a spokesman for the governor of Balkh province, said the group seized weapons from the guards and stormed the building. Four Nepalese guards, a Norwegian, a Romanian and a Swede were killed.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-12949975