FOUR protesters were shot dead and dozens more were injured in Jalalabad yesterday when Afghan police opened fire to control thousands of rioting students enraged by reports of the desecration of the Koran by American interrogators at Guantanamo Bay. Shouting “Death to America”, the demonstrators set fire to American flags and an effigy of President Bush before they set off on a rampage through the city in the most violent show of anti-American sentiment since the fall of the Taleban.

An American patrol passing through the city was stoned and the soldiers fired in the air to scare away the crowd before withdrawing to their base. Then armed Afghan police fired on the crowd, killing four people and injuring fifty.

Witnesses said that the mob became even more enraged after the shooting, moving on to set fire to the Governor’s house and the offices of several foreign aid agencies as frightened aid workers huddled on the rooftop awaiting rescue. Several diplomatic compounds were also attacked, including the Pakistani Consulate.

The demonstrations began a day earlier, prompted by a report in Newsweek magazine that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, the US military base in Cuba where terrorist and Taleban suspects are being held, had placed Korans on lavatories in an attempt to rattle their owners and, in at least one case, flushed away the holy book. The top American official in Kabul said that the Pentagon would be holding an investigation into the “serious allegations”, adding that “disrespect towards the holy book of any religion is unacceptable”.

Witnesses in Jalalabad said that the rioters had also demanded the release of all prisoners from Guantanamo and a promise that “American troops don’t stay in Afghanistan for ever”. Both subjects are likely to come up when President Karzai meets Mr Bush in Washington this month.

Mr Karzai, who is in Brussels for talks at the headquarters of Nato about proposals to expand its role in Afghanistan, said that the riots showed the inability of security institutions to cope and that such freedom of expression was proof that democracy was taking root.

The riots came after demands by the Pakistani Government for an inquiry at Guantanamo Bay.

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