Muslim Koran protests sweep Afghanistan: World peace "threatened" say some

Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets across Afghanistan over plans, now on hold, by a small Florida church to burn copies of the Koran.

Three people were shot when a protest near a Nato base in the north-east of the country turned violent.

President Hamid Karzai said the stunt had been an insult to Islam, while Indonesia's president said it threatened world peace.

President Barack Obama had warned it would be an al-Qaeda "recruitment bonanza", while Defence Secretary Robert Gates asked the pastor to cancel the protest.

Many of Friday's protests in Afghanistan were held after worshippers emerged from mosques, following Eid prayers marking the end of Ramadan.

In Badakhshan's provincial capital Faizabad, 1,500 people took to the streets, the police chief told the BBC.

About 150 people took part in another protest in the city, throwing rocks and attempting to climb the walls of a Nato facility where German soldiers are based.

Private security guards opened fire wounding three people, said the police chief.

Rallies were also held in Nimruz's provincial capital Zaranj; the province of Kunar, in Khas Kunar district; Nangarhar province, in the Khewa district; and the Tagab district of Parwan province, just north of Kabul.

Demonstrations were reported, too, on Friday in the northern provinces of Baghlan, Kunduz and Balkh. Afghanistan has 34 provinces. There have also been major rallies in Kabul over the past week.

Witnesses said the protesters voiced anger that the US government had not banned the Koran bonfire.

Mr Jones, pastor of the previously little-known Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, announced on Thursday that he was putting on hold his plan for an International Burn a Koran Day.

In an Eid message, President Karzai said: "We have heard that in the US, a pastor has decided to insult Korans. Now although we have heard that they are not doing this, we tell them they should not even think of it.

"By burning the Koran, they cannot harm it. The Koran is in the hearts and minds of one-and-a-half billion people. Insulting the Koran is an insult to nations."

The president of Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, warned in a nationally televised address on Friday that Mr Jones's plan threatened world peace.

In a speech marking the end of Ramadan, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said: "I'm of course aware of the reported cancellation of the deplorable act by Terry Jones. However, none of us can be complacent until such a despicable idea is totally extinguished."

On Thursday, Mr Jones told reporters he had spent days waiting for a sign from God to cancel his Koran burning.

This had come, he said, in the form of a deal with a Florida imam to relocate a controversial Islamic cultural centre due to be built near Ground Zero in New York.

But those behind the cultural centre denied that they had ever spoken to the Orlando-based imam or Mr Jones, who then accused the cleric of having lied.

Imam Muhammad Musri, from the Islamic Society of Central Florida, said he had only agreed to fly to New York with Mr Jones on Saturday and speak with the leaders of the Islamic centre project.

Mr Jones - whose plan has been widely condemned by religious and political leaders worldwide - was visited by the FBI a number of times on Thursday.

The top US general in Afghanistan, Gen David Petraeus, warned earlier this week that the lives of Americans serving abroad would be endangered if the Koran burning went ahead.

Conservative Refocus News