Afghan border police officer kills two US soldiers

Americans shot dead while training Afghan police as protests continue over the burning of a Qur'an by a US pastor



Afghan protesters burn an effigy of the American pastor Terry Jones during a demonstration near Kabul. Photograph: Rahmat Gul/AP
A rogue Afghan border police officer has shot dead two US soldiers on a training mission as hundreds of people turned out on the streets for a fourth day of protests against the burning of a Qur'an by a fundamentalist US pastor.

Up to 1,000 residents in the eastern city of Jalalabad blocked the main highway to Kabul and set alight effigies of the pastor, Terry Jones, who presided over the burning, according to a spokesman for the provincial governor.

Hundreds held peaceful protests in neighbouring Laghman and nearby Paktia provinces. In southern Helmand province, residents of Lashkar Gah were coming out for a demonstration when a thwarted suicide attack cleared the streets.

About 20 people have been killed and nearly 150 wounded over three days of protests that have degenerated into violence, although other large gatherings ended peacefully.

The protests were driven by anger at Jones, a radical fundamentalist Christian preacher, who supervised the burning of a Qur'an in front of about 50 people at a church in Florida on 20 March.

Western political and military leaders, including the US president, Barack Obama, and the top US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, have condemned the Qur'an burning, as well as the violence that followed.

Those condemnations appear to have done little to placate anger or anti-western sentiments across much of Afghan society.

Jones has been unrepentant about the Qur'an burning and has since vowed to lead an anti-Islam protest outside the biggest mosque in the US later this month.

The shooting in Faryab of two foreign soldiers who were training Afghan police has highlighted another challenge for US and Nato forces as they try to prepare for a gradual handover of security responsibilities that begins in July.

Abdul Sattar Bariz, deputy governor of northern Faryab province, said two American soldiers were killed at a checkpoint by a member of the Afghan border police in what appeared to be the latest in a string of rogue shootings.

"He killed the two trainers while they were teaching [Afghan police] in Faryab city," Bariz told Reuters by telephone.