Nightly News   |  February 22, 2012

Quran protests highlight Afghanistan’s instability

Riots triggered by the inadvertent Quran burning at a U.S. military base prompted the U.S. to lock down its embassy. NBC’s Atia Abawi reports.

Share This:

This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>>> the u.s. embassy in afghanistan is on lockdown tonight and seven people dead there after police opened fire to disperse thousands of anti-american protestors. they are outraged at the unintentional burning of koran. despite official apologies, there is concern this eruption of anger may spiral out of control. we are in kabul tonight.

>> reporter: thousands of angry afghans took to the streets today in various cities of afghanistan chanting, "death to america" for a second day of protests. they're protesting the burning of the koran and other religious material by u.s. soldiers in bagram air base north of kabul. since the incident, nato profusely apologized, calling the incident unintentional. they say those soldiers were cleaning out a library at a detention facility on the base and didn't realize what they were burning until the afghan staffers saw what was happening. these protests turned violent and deadly. today, seven afghans were killed and dozens more injured while protestors were throwing stones and molotov cocktails at foreign instant layings. the u.s. embassy was on lockdown as well as orrin guest house us throughout the city and throughout the country for fear of escalation of violence. we expect protests to continue in the coming days and expect them to get more violent and more deadly. brian?