KABUL (Reuters) â€" NATO-led forces shot an armed protester Thursday when he tried to enter a foreign military base in southern Afghanistan Thursday, the alliance said.
The man was among some 100 Afghan civilians demonstrating outside Forward Operating Base (FOB) Mirwais in Chora district of southern Uruzgan province, over an alleged Koran burning incident at the base, a spokesman for the NATO-led force said.
The incident is the latest in a string of protests in Afghanistan that have turned violent in the last week and comes only two days before a parliamentary election. The Taliban have threatened to disrupt the poll.
The top U.N. envoy in Afghanistan, Staffan de Mistura, has warned that militants could attempt to exploit anti-Western sentiments in the run-up to the poll.
Around 100 Afghan civilians started throwing rocks at foreign forces guarding FOB Mirwais Thursday, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement.
One protester, armed with an AK-47 assault rifle, was shot by an ISAF service member when he tried to access the base through a side gate, ISAF said.
James Judge, a civilian spokesman for ISAF in Kabul, said the man was dragged off by the crowd and it was not immediately clear if he was dead. The protesters had thereafter dispersed.
Judge said there had been no burning of a Koran inside the base, but rather troops had been doing a routine burning of sensitive ISAF documents.
The latest protest follows several demonstrations around the country over the weekend and one Wednesday over plans by a U.S. pastor to burn copies of the Koran to mark the anniversary of the September 11 attacks. The pastor later scrapped the idea.
At least four people have been killed and several more wounded in the protests over the last week.
Similar protests over perceived desecration of Muslim symbols have led to dozens of deaths in Afghanistan in recent years, including after a Danish newspaper published a cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammad in 2005.
(Reporting by Jonathon Burch; Editing by Bryson Hull and Sugita Katyal)
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