The Pentagon apologized for the burning of the Quran, the Islamic scripture, in a trash dump at the biggest U.S. military base in Afghanistan after the action set off protests.
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta condemned the burning, which the top American commander in Afghanistan said was inadvertent.

"These actions do not represent the views of the United States military," George Little, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters yesterday.

Thousands of Afghan men threw rocks at the gates of the Bagram air base, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of the capital, Kabul, after Afghan workers emerged carrying charred Qurans, said Abdul Basir Salangi, the governor of Parwan province, where Bagram is located. "People were in a very violent mood and were shouting 'Death to America,'" Salangi said in a telephone interview.

While the protest ended by nightfall, the Quran-burning will worsen damage to Afghans' image of the U.S.-led forces from a series of incidents in the past year, according to Salangi and Abdurrahim Muqdader, a tribal elder in the province.

"This incident is a big victory for the Taliban because Afghans will believe what they say -- that the foreigners are here to dishonor our book and Islamic culture," Muqdader said in a phone interview. He said the Quran-burning will increase the danger in coming days of Afghan troops or police attacking U.S. soldiers in revenge.

Improper Disposal
Yesterday's protest erupted after personnel of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, "improperly disposed of a large number of Islamic religious materials," which included Qurans, said the force's commander, U.S. Army General John Allen. "The materials recovered will be properly handled by appropriate religious authorities," Allen said in a statement posted on the ISAF website.

Allen ordered that all coalition forces in Afghanistan undergo training in "the proper handling of religious materials" by March 3.

The books burned had been taken from a library at a prison for alleged Taliban and allied Islamic militant fighters, according to the ISAF. The volumes were thrown into a pile of debris for burning and pulled out by Afghan employees of the base, including Muhammad Nabi.

"I was collecting pages from the Quran, some burned and some unburned, and two U.S. soldiers called for me to give the pages to them," Nabi said in a phone interview. "I told them, 'Even if you kill me, I won't give them to you,'" Nabi said.