Angry protests broke
out and shock rippled through Afghanistan on February 21 when accounts
surfaced that NATO personnel at Bagram Air Base had burned a number of
Korans and were preparing to burn more. A NATO spokesman said the books
were inadvertently sent for incineration after being gathered at a
detention facility for suspected insurgents. The incident brought
nearly a week of strong anti-American demonstrations in which 30 people,
including American troops were killed and many others wounded. Despite
President Obama's letter of apology to President Hamid Karzai, the
violence escalated. Two American soldiers were shot dead inside the
Interior Ministry building in Kabul on Feb. 25. On Feb. 27, two suicide
attackers detonated a car bomb at the entrance to a NATO air base in
eastern Afghanistan. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the bombing
as revenge for the burning of the Korans. While the violence raged,
Afghan civilians faced harsher than usual winter weather and cold
temperatures in which more than 40 people, mostly children, have frozen
to death. -- Paula Nelson (48 photos total)
Afghan
demonstrators show copies of the Koran allegedly set alight by US
soldiers, during a protest against Koran desecration at the gate of
Bagram airbase, Feb. 21, 2012 at Bagram, north of Kabul. The copies of
the burned Korans and Islamic religious texts were obtained by Afghan
workers contracted to work inside Bagram air base, and presented to
demonstrators gathered outside the military installation.(Shah
Marai/AFP/Getty Images)
A
child stands with his father as they wait to receive blankets and
winter jackets from Welthungerhilfe, a German NGO, during a snow fall at
a camp for internally displaced Afghans in Kabul, Afghanistan, Feb, 20.
2012. More than 40 people, most of them children, have frozen to death
in what has been Afghanistan's coldest winter in years, an Afghan health
official said. (Musadeq Sadeq/Associated Press)
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