KABUL (Reuters) - Twelve people were killed on Friday in the bloodiest day yet in protests that have raged across Afghanistan over the desecration of copies of the Muslim holy book at a NATO military base with riot police and soldiers on high alert braced for more violence. 
 
 The burning of the Korans at the Bagram compound earlier this week has deepened public mistrust of NATO forces struggling to stabilize Afghanistan before foreign combat troops withdraw in 2014. 
 
 Hundreds of Afghans marched toward the palace of Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul, while on the other side of the capital protesters hoisted the white flag of the Taliban. 
 
 Chanting "Death to America!" and "Long live Islam!," protesters also threw rocks at police in Kabul, while Afghan army helicopters circled above. 
 
 Friday is a holy day and the official weekly holiday in Afghanistan and mosques in the capital drew large crowds, with police in pick-up trucks posted on nearby streets. 
 
 Armed protesters took refuge in shops in the eastern part of the city, where they killed one demonstrator, said police at the scene. In another Kabul rally, police said they were unsure who fired the shots that killed a second protester. 
 
 Seven more protesters were killed in the western province of Herat, two more in eastern Khost province and one in the relatively peaceful northern Baghlan province, health and local officials said. In Herat, around 500 men charged at the U.S. consulate. 
 
 U.S. President Barack Obama had sent a letter to Karzai apologizing for the unintentional burning of the Korans at NATO's main Bagram air base, north of Kabul, after Afghan laborers found charred copies while collecting rubbish. 
 
 Muslims consider the Koran to be the literal word of God and treat each copy with deep reverence. Desecration is considered one of the worst forms of blasphemy. 
 
 Afghanistan wants NATO to put those responsible on public trial. 
 
 In neighboring U.S. ally Pakistan, about 400 members of a hardline Islamist group staged protests. "If you burn the Koran, we will burn you," they shouted. 
 
 To Afghanistan's west, Iranian cleric Ahmad Khatami said the U.S. had purposely burned the Korans. "These apologies are fake. The world should know that America is against Islam," he said in a speech broadcast live on state radio. 
 
 "It (the Koran burning) was not a mistake. It was an intentional move, done on purpose." 
 
 Most Westerners have been confined to their heavily fortified compounds, including at the sprawling U.S. embassy complex and other diplomatic missions, as protests that have killed a total of 23 people, including two U.S. soldiers, rolled into their fourth day. The embassy, in a message on the microblogging site Twitter, urged U.S. citizens to "please be safe out there" and expanded movement restrictions to relatively peaceful northern provinces, where large demonstrations also occurred Thursday, including the attempted storming of a Norwegian military base. 
 
 The Taliban urged Afghan security forces Thursday to "turn their guns on the foreign infidel invaders" and repeatedly urged Afghans to kill, beat and capture NATO soldiers. 
 
 Germany, which has the third-largest foreign presence in the NATO-led war, pulled out several weeks early of a small base in the northern Takhar province Friday over security concerns, a defense ministry spokesman said. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Amira Mitri in TEHRAN, Imtiaz Shah in KARACHI, Sabine Siebold in BERLIN, Writing by Amie Ferris-Rotman; Editing by Michael Georgy and Ed Lane) ||||| It was unclear on Friday night whether, after four days of protests, the violence that has rolled through the country was finally spent, or if the Koran burning had uncorked an inexhaustible well of fury over the continuing presence of Western troops after 10 years of war. In some measure, the angry demonstrations were to be expected in a religious country fed up with foreigners, but the tension this week seems more pervasive and irresolvable than in the past. 
 
 “The violence is almost within the normal realm of things that you would see after this kind of incident,” said Martine Van Bijlert, a co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, a policy and research institute in Kabul. “The big question is, how long does it go on? You have to watch who jumps on the bandwagon. It is very intense, and there’s the feeling that all areas need to have had their own demonstration if they haven’t had one yet.” 
 
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 The worst violence Friday was in Herat Province, in the West on the Iranian border, where seven people were killed. Protesters there were armed and some appeared to be agents provocateurs, government officials said. 
 
 “People were on their way home after the prayer when a number of opposition and agitator people, misusing the pure emotions of the people, urged them to go toward the United States Consulate in the city,” said Mohyaddin Noori, the spokesman for Herat’s provincial governor. “On the way to the consulate, some of these riotous people who were armed opened fire and were throwing rocks.” 
 
 One of the vehicles hit by gunfire was a police truck full of ammunition, which exploded, sending bullets in all directions and wounding 65 people, he said. 
 
 Several Heratis suggested that Iranian agents were at work behind the scenes. Some noted that Radio Mashad, an Iranian station, had urged action against Western interests in Afghanistan, taking advantage of a moment when people’s emotions were running high, said Mohammed Rafiq Shaheer, a professor of political science at Herat University. He noted that protesters appeared to have been directed to march towards the American Consulate by mullahs in several areas of the city. 
 
 He said that he blamed Pakistani and Iranian intelligence. Both agencies, he said, “have invested a lot in this country and they have people loyal to them, and this is a perfect time for the intelligence apparatus of the neighboring countries to ignite people’s fiery emotions which would lead them to violence.” 
 
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 Two protesters died in Khost Province, near the Pakistan border, and one in Baghlan Province. 
 
 In Kabul, despite larger numbers of protesters on the streets, only a handful were injured. 
 
 Interior Minister Bismullah Khan adopted a nuanced strategy that encouraged the protesters to express themselves peacefully, but also put in place a phalanx of police units to keep the most menacing from making their way to the center of the city. 
 
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 Riot police officers backed up by heavily armed special units in some 40 police trucks faced down an estimated 4,000 men wielding rocks and sticks after Friday Prayer. At one point as the two groups neared each other, protesters threw rocks and shouted, but the police did not fire and eventually moved the protesters back. 
 
 A few of the protesters were waving the Taliban’s white flag, some wore head wrappings bearing the jihad slogan “I sacrifice myself,” and protesters throughout the city shouted “Death to America.” 
 
 The police also broke up another crowd of about 1,000 in central Kabul, first by driving trucks into the crowd to disperse it and then by chasing the protesters on foot and hitting them with rubber batons. 
 
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 Some officers said they did the job despite sympathizing with the protesters. 
 
 “We try to stop the demonstrators from violence and looting,” said a Kabul police officer, Azizullah, 40, who uses only one name. “That is our job, but If I were an ordinary person, not a policeman, I would have joined the demonstrations.” 
 
 NATO said it was still investigating what led to the decision to burn Korans and other religious texts. Early reports said that the books had inflammatory messages written in them from detained Taliban suspects. Most of the Korans that were rescued from the flames are still at Bagram Air Base in a locked container. They are viewed as evidence, a NATO spokesman said. A few of the Korans were taken out of the base by Afghan employees. 
 
 The absence of lethal violence in Kabul belies a deep frustration that appeared in interviews with police officers and protesters alike, a sense that justice has not yet been done and a suspicion that the United States, while apologizing, will not hold anyone to account. 
 
 “Just by saying ‘I am sorry,’ nothing can be solved,” said Wali Mohammed, one of the protesters. “We want an open trial for those infidels who have burned our Holy Koran.” 
 
 Mohammed Anwar, an off-duty police officer, had joined the protesters on Friday and seemed barely able to contain his fury. “I will take revenge from the infidels for what they did to our Holy Koran, and I will kill them whenever I get the chance,” he said as he walked with crowd of protesters wielding rocks and sticks. “I don’t care about the job I have.” ||||| 1 of 6. An Afghan National Army soldier is reflected in a window as he patrols near Camp Phoenix, after an attack in Kabul April 2, 2011. 
 
 KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - At least 10 people have been killed and 83 wounded in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, officials said on Saturday, on a second day of violent protests over the burning of a Koran by a radical fundamentalist Christian in the United States. 
 
 A suicide attack also hit a NATO military base in the capital Kabul, the day after protesters over-ran a U.N. mission in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif and killed seven foreign staff, in the deadliest attack on the UN in Afghanistan. 
 
 Some protesters in Kandahar carried white Taliban flags and shouted slogans including "long live the Taliban" and "death to America." In rioting that lasted hours, they smashed shops, burned tires and vandalized a girl's high school. 
 
 Two of the dead were Afghan policemen, an official said. 
 
 The violence is the worst in Afghanistan for months, and comes as the country gears up for the first stage of a years-long security handover to Afghan troops, and after the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, delivered an optimistic assessment of progress in the war. 
 
 The attacks were driven by anger at the actions of extremist Christian preacher Terry Jones who supervised the burning of the Koran in front of about 50 people at a church in Florida on March 20, according to his website. 
 
 The burning initially passed relatively unnoticed in Afghanistan, but after criticism from President Hamid Karzai, and calls for justice during Friday sermons, thousands poured into the streets in several cities to denounce Jones this weekend. 
 
 Afghan and U.N. officials suggested provocateurs had sabotaged peaceful protests. Marches in Kabul, western Herat city and northern Tahar province ended without violence. 
 
 But the Taliban denied any role in the Mazar attack or Kandahar protests and analysts warned against underestimating the depth of anti-Western sentiment in much of Afghanistan, after years of military presence and many civilian casualties. 
 
 "Insurgent provocation is not necessary for things like (the U.N. attack) to happen, because indeed the mood and atmosphere in a large part of the population is like this," said Thomas Ruttig, co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network. 
 
 "Anger over foreigners in general, which has probably spread from the military to NGOs and the U.N. and other actors, just needs a little spark and things can be set alight." 
 
 In Kabul on Saturday, a small group of burkha-clad insurgents attacked a coalition base, although they caused only light injuries to three soldiers, police and NATO said. 
 
 SOME SHOT, SOME BEATEN 
 
 In Kandahar, one of the policemen killed and several civilians died from gunshot wounds, said Abdul Qayum Pukhla, the senior health official for the province. The rest of the dead had been beaten and stoned he added. 
 
 It was not clear if gunshot wounds were caused by protesters or police trying to control them over hours of rioting. 
 
 A band of around 150 men who had taken to the streets to denounce the Koran burning set tires alight, smashed shops and assaulted an Afghan photographer, Reuters' witnesses said. Some of the attackers were carrying guns. 
 
 The photographer was hit over the head and had his camera taken from him and smashed, by protesters who discussed killing him. Police kept other journalists from approaching the crowd. 
 
 In the violence they also smashed windows and burned chairs at the Zarghona High School for girls. The Taliban opposed girls' education, and Kandahar was their spiritual heartland. 
 
 The spokesman for the governor of Kandahar province said the protest was organized by the Taliban who used the Koran burning as an excuse to incite violence in a city where their reach has been curtailed by an aggressive NATO-led military campaign. 
 
 INSURGENTS OR PROTESTERS? 
 
 The Taliban said they had no role in the Kandahar violence or Friday's assault on the U.N. office in the usually peaceful city of Mazar-i-Sharif, after both provincial governors and a senior U.N. official suggested an insurgent role. 
 
 "The Taliban had nothing to do with this, it was a pure act of responsible Muslims," spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said by phone from an undisclosed location of the Mazar attack. He later added that the Kandahar demonstration was also spontaneous. 
 
 Interior Ministry spokesman Zemari Bashery said police reports suggested the attack was not planned. 
 
 Around 5,000 demonstrators flooded into the streets of a city considered safe enough to be in the vanguard of a crucial security transition, after Friday prayers ended, and many headed straight for the U.N. mission. 
 
 There they overwhelmed security guards, burned parts of the compound and climbed blast walls to topple a guard tower. The throat of one of slain foreigners had been slit, the U.N. said. 
 
 Five Afghan protesters were also killed and others wounded, some after trying to take weapons off U.N. security guards. 
 
 The attack took many in the city, one of the country's most prosperous and stable, by surprise. Some were horrified by the extreme violence but not all had sympathy for the foreign dead. 
 
 "I took part in the demonstration to curse the foreigners but I had no weapon," said shopkeeper Rahim Mohammad. 
 
 "But I don't feel sorry for UN workers killed, our people are slaughtered by foreigners everyday." 
 
 More volatile protests are possible across deeply religious Afghanistan, where anti-Western sentiment has been fueled for years by civilian casualties, and the Taliban. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi in KABUL and Ismail Sameem in KANDAHAR, writing by Emma Graham-Harrison; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)
– Protesters are rallying once again to decry the burning of Korans at Bagram, with more shouts of "death to America"—and deaths—throughout the country. The New York Times reports that gunfire was audible as demonstrators assembled at a Kabul mosque following Friday prayers. Another 4,000 people carrying sticks and rocks moved toward the center of the city; some waved Taliban flags and had a jihadist slogan written on their clothes: "I sacrifice myself." Demonstrations occurred in at least six more provinces throughout Afghanistan, and Reuters reports that nine more were killed today: seven in the western province of Herat, and two in Khost in the east. Meanwhile, Germany says it has withdrawn troops from an outpost in northern Afghanistan amid the protests. The German military had planned to shutter its base in the Taloqan area in late March, but the 50 remaining soldiers have been transferred out of the base in light of the demonstrations, reports the AP. And at home, Obama is facing GOP criticism for his apology.