Protesters angry at Koran burning throw grenades at US base

The attacks were the latest in six days of violence across the country by Afghans furious at the way some Korans at an American base outside of Kabul were disposed of in a burn pit.

The incident has swiftly spiralled out of control, leaving dozens of people dead, including four US troops killed by their Afghan counterparts, in a sign of the tenuous nature of the relationship between Afghanistan and the US.

Afghan authorities have launched a manhunt across the country for a driver they suspect of involvement in the killing of two US military advisers who were shot dead at an Afghan ministry on Saturday. International advisers working at Afghan ministries were recalled out of fears of another attack.

In Kunduz province yesterday, thousands of demonstrators started out protesting peacefully but then the group turned violent as they tried to enter the district’s largest city, said district administrator Amanuddin Quriashi. People in the crowd fired on police and threw grenades at a US base on the city’s outskirts, he said.

Seven Nato troops were wounded and one of the protesters was killed when troops fired out from the US base, Mr Quriashi said. Another demonstrator was killed by Afghan police, he added.

A Nato spokesman said an explosion occurred outside the base, but the grenades did not breach its defences.

More than 30 people have been killed in clashes since it emerged last Tuesday that copies of the Muslim holy book and other religious materials had been thrown into a fire pit used to burn rubbish at Bagram Air Field, a large US base north of Kabul.

Nato and the British government recalled their international advisers from Afghan ministries in the capital late on Saturday after the two advisers – a lieutenant colonel and a major – were found dead in their office, shot in the back of the head.

Pakistan has demolished more than half of the three-storey compound where Osama bin Laden was killed by US commandos last May, erasing a concrete reminder of a painful and embarrassing chapter in the country’s history. Rings of police kept spectators and journalists away from the compound, which the government began tearing down on Saturday night under powerful floodlights without any prior notice.

Pakistan was outraged by the covert American raid in the north-western town of Abbottabad because it was not told about it beforehand.