UN launches investigation into Afghanistan murders

Eyewitnesses said armed Afghan riot police watched passively as a mob overran the compound.

Seven UN employees were killed, including four Gurkha guards and three international officials. One police chief said two of the victims had been beheaded, while other reports said some had had their throats slit with knives or been shot in the head.

The protests had been called over the burning of a Koran by a controversial American pastor in Florida last month, and violence related to the incident flared again yesterday when nine protesters were killed and 77 injured in clashes in Kandahar.

Pastor Terry Jones remained defiant in the face of outrage against his actions. He told The Sunday Telegraph that he was considering putting the Islamic prophet Mohammed on trial in his next "day of judgement" – an act which is highly likely to spark further unrest.

Officials claimed that the protests in Afghanistan had been hijacked by Taliban-led insurgents who also injured three soldiers in a suicide bomb attack on a Nato base in Kabul yesterday.

The scale of the violence, the brutality of the Mazar-i-Sharif attack, and the failure of local security forces to protect their compound has left UN staff in Afghanistan bewildered and raised questions about the ability of Afghan forces to take over security in the area when Nato forces withdraw later this summer.

It was the worst attack it has suffered in the country since 2001, but a UN spokesman vowed its staff will not abandon their work in Afghanistan.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon yesterday condemned the attack as "outrageous and cowardly" while the UN Security Council said those killed were "dedicated to the cause of peace in Afghanistan and to a better life for all Afghans."

As UN investigators continued their inquiries last night, senior police officials and eyewitnesses in Mazar-i-Sharif described how incompetence, cowardice and indifference were key factors in leaving some of the UN's most dedicated staff at the mercy of a baying mob.

But the train of events which led to the massacre was flagged off on March 20 in Gainesville, Florida, with a piece of incendiary 'religious' theatre.

Evangelical Christians from Pastor Terry Jones' Dove World Outreach Centre put the Koran 'on trial' for encouraging rape and murder and set it on fire after a packed jury – predictably – found it guilty.

The flames spread quickly to Afghanistan where anti-American and Western feelings were already running high over revelations that an American 'Kill Team' had tortured and killed innocent Afghans and taken photographs of their bodies as 'trophies.' Imams throughout Afghanistan told their followers of Pastor Jones' antics at Friday prayers on March 25th and anger spread rapidly in the days following the prayers as Islamic scholars organised protests in Kabul, Herat, Kandahar and Mazar-i-Sharif – one of the country's hitherto most peaceful cities.

In Mazar-i-Sharif, leading Shia and Sunni Muslim scholars from local mosques and Balkh University discussed their plans for a 'Day of Rage' to voice their anger. Some were members of the provincial council and informed their colleagues about the planned protest after Friday prayers on April 1, council leader Dr Mohammad Afzel Hadeed told The Sunday Telegraph. Police chiefs were also informed.

On Wednesday leaflets were handed out to Islamic Studies students at the local university and on Thursday, cars mounted with loudhailers toured the city's streets to drum up support for the following day's protest. According to student Abdul Rahim, the leaflet urged Muslims to "Come out to defend our Koran," he said.

On Friday, at least six scholars began preaching at 1pm at the city's famous blue-domed Rauza Sharif mosque, where Imam Ali, the Prophet Mohammad's grandson is believed to be buried. When they emerged an hour later they roused a growing crowd of demonstrators from a sound system as they marched towards the UN compound.

Governor Atta Mohammad Noor said the protest leaders had given notice 24 hours earlier, but had not disclosed plans to march on the UN compound.

His claim was denied by provincial council leader Mohammad Afzal Hadeed, who said the protest leaders had said they wanted to hand in a resolution to the UN and demand it helps bring Pastor Jones and his followers to 'justice.'

Mr Hadaad said he had addressed the demonstrators himself, urging them to register their protest and walked with the protesters for the first hour but then left to attend to a domestic issue at home. "Oh yes, we just told them to protest so that we show our feelings. It was a peaceful demonstration," he said.

At that stage there were an estimated 1000 marchers stewarded from the front by 30 members of the disciplined Afghan National Civil Order Police, in anti-riot gear and armed with guns and Perspex shields.

According to deputy police chief Raouf Taj a further 70 members of the Afghan National Police, known for its corruption and ill-discipline, completed the security provision.

As the crowd swelled, it quickly became clear the police contingent was dangerously outnumbered, Mr Taj told The Sunday Telegraph. Police numbers were "several times lower than the protesters" and his men "did not want to fire on protesters unless they were ordered to do so.

"Nobody thought it would go so bad," he said.

One organiser, Islamuddin Ghafouri, said there had been no intention to attack the United Nations Assistance Mission Afghanistan when they set off to hand in their resolution, but as the neared the compound "a group of young men who were walking in the front of the crowd ran towards the office." Police responded to their charge by firing their weapons in the air but it served only to further anger the mob. "The men got angrier," he said.

A number of protesters said they had warned the police to back off and threatened to attack them if they did not. "We told the police that this fight between us and the infidels. They agreed first, but then they fired on us," said protester Abdul Hamid.

Mohammad Hassan, a baker near the UN compound, said the police arrived shortly before the protesters and asked him to close his shop. "When they protesters arrived here, they were already very emotional and throwing stones."

As the threat increased, the UN's local head of mission, Russian diplomat Pavel Ershov came out of the compound to speak to protest leaders to diffuse the tension. But according to one police officer stationed by the UN gate, he was attacked by angry protesters who punched and kicked him.

"He had instructed the security forces guarding the compound not to open fire because firing would provoke the protesters to storm the office," he said, but when the protesters attacked him he had said, in Arabic, "the Holy words, there is no God but Allah, and that's why his life was spared."

He was rushed to hospital by police.

On all sides of the compound protesters scaled the security walls on ladders, threw stones, attacked armed police and seized their guns before shooting the UN's ex-Gurkha guards.

Video footage broadcast on Afghan television showed armed police in disarray, some firing in the air, while protesters atop the security walls used cable-cutters to dismantle barbed wire and toppled a guard tower inside a compound corner. One protester was shown smashing a machine against a kerb in a fit of anger.

Police said their firing in the air and at the legs of some of the protesters had caused several thousand to flee but several hundred remained and overran the compound.

On any normal working day, there would have been 15 UN international staff and around 40 Afghan nationals working inside the compound, but on Friday, part of the Afghan weekend, there were far fewer.

Among those working their weekend was Swedish human rights worker Joakim Dungel, a 27-year-old legal specialist who is believed to have been posted to Mazar-i-Sharif earlier this year to prepare him for a stint at a more dangerous mission in Afghanistan.

Lieutenant-Colonel Siri Skare, a 53-year-old female pilot from Norway, and an unnamed Romanian official were also killed as the mob, many of them armed according to the UN, ran wild, setting fire to the building and attacking staff.

UN officials were unable to confirm reports that two of their staff were beheaded in the rampage, or explain why they had not taken shelter in a security bunker believed to be in the basement.

Police said they had arrested 27 'insurgents' involved in the attack, while intelligence officials said they were investigating the role of two local clerics, Abdul Raouf Tawana, a scholar with close ties with Iranian diplomats, and Maulvi Qahir, a Tajik from believed to have old links to the former Taliban regime. They were seen preaching to the crowd shortly before the violence started but left before the compound was attacked.

Munir Ahmad Farhad, spokesman for Governor Noor, said the arrested men included "opportunists and international terrorists" but gave no further details.

He conceded the government had been ill-prepared for the demonstration but insisted once the violence broke out the police quickly brought it under control.

"We had preparation for 1,000 protesters. But later there are some 20,000 people and we did not have enough police forces to control them. As soon as the protesters started attacking the compound, our police forces started arresting their organisers and stopped them from further destruction," he said.

One UN official was scathing in his response. The police had simply failed to act, he said.

"It was an overwhelming number of demonstrators, and few police."

The investigation which began on Friday evening will analyse and report on the role of the police, he said.

Afghanistan analyst Stephen Carter said the failure of the police in Mazar-i-Sharif raised larger questions about the capability of Afghan forces to take over security from Nato forces.

"The inability of the police to protect a UN compound the in the middle of one of the safer cities in the country is inevitably going to raise questions about whether a handover of security is really possible," he said.

"Hundreds of millions are being poured into building up the security forces, but this will add force to concerns that the failure to deal with the internal, structural problems of the police, to provide quality as well as quantity, threatens to undermine the rest of the investment."

In Gainesville, Florida, thousands of miles from the carnage his Koran-burning stunt had caused, Pastor Terry Jones, was unrepentant.

He said that any suggestion that the mob who killed United Nations workers had been provoked by his actions was "only making a justification" for murder.

"We find it very tragic any time that someone is murdered but we do not feel any responsibility for that. It definitely does indicate that there is a very radical element of Islam," he said.

"We'd like to see the President of the United States not only condemn these actions but to call on the UN for these people and Muslim-dominated countries to be held accountable."

He added that he was thinking about putting the Prophet Mohammed 'on trial'.

"It is definitely a consideration to stage a trial on the life of Mohammed in the future," he said in interview on Saturday.

Last night the UN was still in a state of shock and grief, painfully aware of the issues at stake, and who is paying the price for the Pastor's freedom of speech.