Seven dead in latest Afghan violence over Koran burning KABUL - Six protesters and a police officer were killed in the western Afghan province of Herat on Friday when demonstrations over the accidental burning of Korans on a U.S. military base again turned violent, local officials said. Dozens more protesters were wounded, authorities said, and one group tried unsuccessfully to storm Herat's U.S. consulate. The protests, which began on Tuesday outside Bagram air base after the mistaken incineration of the Muslim holy books was discovered, have roiled Afghanistan for four days, rattling the already fragile alliance between the U.S.-led NATO forces here and the people and government of Afghanistan. In the eastern province of Khost, government spokesman Mubarez Zadran said, hundreds of people also took to the streets after the Friday noon prayers, which are a focal point of the Muslim week and a common setting-off point for demonstrations. "They took advantage of the situation and burned private cars and shops," Zadran said. Hundreds more gathered in Jalalabad and Laghman, both in eastern Afghanistan, and in Baghlan province in the northeast, where demonstrations turned briefly violent but faded by sunset. Gen. John R. Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, released a new statement to address the ongoing unrest, saying the investigation into the Koran burning is ongoing. "Working together with the Afghan leadership is the only way for us to correct this major error and ensure that it never happens again," Allen said. Allen has apologized profusely for the incident, which involved Korans confiscated from a prison on the Bagram base because they were suspected of being used to pass inflammatory messages. The books were accidentally grouped with other materials destined for the incinerator. President Obama has apologized directly to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and the U.S. military has pledged new training to avoid similar mistakes in the future. But the outreach has done little to quell the anger surging through Afghanistan and other parts of the world over an act that most Muslims would consider an enormous desecration. In Afghanistan on Thursday, interviews with several Afghan police officers indicated a deep level of sympathy for the protesters, and a shared sense of outrage among the demonstrators and those charged with keeping the peace. We have no patience left," said one Afghan police officer in central Kabul, who has worked at the same checkpoint since he joined the force seven months ago. He looked at his colleague, who stood next to him, nodding.