NATO on Saturday pulled all its staff out of Afghan government ministries after two US military advisors were shot dead in the interior ministry.
NATO on Saturday pulled all its staff out of Afghan government ministries after two US military advisors were shot dead in the interior ministry, as anti-US protests raged for a fifth day.
Taliban insurgents claimed responsibility for the shooting, saying it was in revenge for the burning of copies of the Holy Quran at a US-run military base -- an incident that forced US President Barack Obama to apologise to the Afghan people.
Obama didn’t apologize to the Muslim states and peoples till the moment.
In a day of protest across the country, a UN compound came under attack by thousands of demonstrators in northeastern Kunduz province, but they were driven back when police fired into the crowd, an AFP correspondent at the scene said.
Five people were reported killed in the attack, taking the five day death toll from protests over the burning of copies of the Holly Quran at the US-run Bagram airbase to around 30.
President Hamid Karzai urged demonstrators and Afghan security forces Sunday to exercise restraint, saying the government was pressing the US "on the need to bring to justice the perpetrators of the crime".
The president made the appeal in a televised news conference after at least 29 people died in five days of demonstrations over the burning of the Holy Quran at a US military base.
Karzai "condemned with the strongest words" the treatment of the Holy Book and said the perpetrators should be punished, while asking his countrymen to be calm and peaceful. "The enemies of Afghanistan misuse their feelings," he stated.
US-led NATO forces on Saturday pulled all their staff out of Afghan government ministries after the shooting, with the Pentagon condemning it as "unacceptable" and calling on Afghan authorities to curtail raging violence.
Karzai told the news conference in response to a question that "we feel sorry for what happened", but added that it was not yet known whether the shooter was an Afghan or a foreigner.
However, government sources said police were hunting for an Afghan intelligence official suspected of the shooting.
The US, which leads a 130,000-strong occupation military force in Afghanistan, has advisors throughout the Afghan government, but commanding officer General John Allen ordered them all withdrawn..
"Despite being pulled from the ministries, the military advisers remained in contact with ministry personnel," a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force, Lt Col Jimmie Cummings, said Sunday.
"We will not let this incident divide the coalition," he said on ISAF's Twitter feed.
Britain also said its embassy was also temporarily withdrawing all civilian mentors and advisors from Afghan government institutions in Kabul.
The Quran burning at Bagram airbase north of Kabul has inflamed anti-Western sentiment already smoldering in Afghanistan over abuses by US-led occupation troops.
Analysts say it has plunged relations between Afghans and their Western allies to an all time low.
"It has never been as bad as this and it could be a turning point" in the West's 10-year occupation in the war-torn country, said Martine van Bijlert of the Afghanistan Analysts' Network.
