Anti-U.S. protesters tried to storm a U.S. consulate and march on NATO headquarters in Kabul on Friday as violent demonstrations over the burning of Korans pushed into a fourth day, killing 23 people.
Afghan officials said five people died on Friday, four of them in the usually relatively peaceful western province of Herat and another demonstrator in the northern province of Baghlan, where hundreds took to the streets.
The Koran incident has fanned the flames of anti-Western sentiment already burning over abuses by the U.S.-led foreign troops, such as the release last month of a video showing U.S. Marines urinating on the corpses of dead Afghans. President Hamid Karzai's government and the U.S.-led NATO mission in Afghanistan has appealed for calm and restraint, fearful that Taliban insurgents are trying to exploit the anti-American backlash.
