KABUL, Afghanistan, May 12 - Anti-American violence spread to 10 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces and into Pakistan on Thursday as four more protesters died in a third day of demonstrations and clashes with the police.
Hundreds of students took part in three separate demonstrations here in the capital, where they burned an American flag, and a provincial office of CARE International was ransacked in a continuation of the most widespread protests against the American presence since the fall of the Taliban government more than three years ago.
In the most violent single incident, the police fired on hundreds of tribesmen from Khogiani, a district in eastern Afghanistan, who were trying to march in protest on Jalalabad, the town where four people died and 60 were wounded on Wednesday.
The police blocked the tribesmen, many of whom were armed, 20 miles from the city and had orders to fire into the air to disperse the crowd, said Fazel Muhammad Ibrahimi, the director of health in the province.
The Afghan authorities and Kabul residents said the spate of violence was the fault of outsiders, who they said were seeking to capitalize on student protests stirred up by reports, most recently in the May 9 issue of Newsweek, that Americans had desecrated the Koran during interrogations at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Islamic fundamentalist political parties, remnants of the former Taliban government and a renegade anti-American commander, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, are all possible sources of the violence, said Lutfullah Mashal, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry.
The American military is still trying to analyze whether the violence is politically driven, instigated by outsiders or a sign of general public frustration with the slow pace of reconstruction in the country, said a spokesman, Col. James Yonts. Students interviewed in Kabul pointed to the presence of American troops in the country as another source of resentment.
Local governors might also be encouraging protests against the central government and its American backers to improve their own standing before parliamentary elections in September, said Jandad Spinghar, head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission in Jalalabad.
Seeking to calm the passions raised by the desecration report, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed regret for the loss of life and promised a full investigation of the allegation against Americans at Guantánamo. "Disrespect for the Holy Koran is not now, nor has it ever been, nor will it ever be tolerated by the United States," Ms. Rice said in a surprise statement issued before an appearance at the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Protests erupted throughout the country on Thursday, spreading south from the capital region.
In the town of Chak in Wardak Province, south of Kabul, a high school student was killed and five were wounded when the police opened fire on demonstrators who marched on the provincial capital, said the provincial police chief, Basir Salangi.
"The people claim the police did it, and the police say it was the demonstrators," he said, reflecting the confusion over many of the clashes that broke out. The protesters set fire to the administration building, in anger at the shooting by the police, the official Afghan news agency, Bakhtar, reported, quoting one of the student demonstrators.
In Logar, another province south of Kabul, protesters toppled a mobile telephone tower and destroyed equipment at its base overnight, local officials said. High school students then gathered at their school in the town of Muhammad Agha at 7:30 a.m. Thursday to protest the report from Guantánamo. Protesters broke the windows of a new foreign-financed district administration office that was opened just last Saturday by President Hamid Karzai.
The rioters then attacked the offices of CARE International, the American aid group, and of another aid organization next door, scaling the walls, breaking windows and smashing computers and beating some of the local staff. The crowd returned three times to the compound during the day, Paul Barker, the country director of CARE, said.
The high school students did not instigate the violence, Mr. Barker said. "They were the majority," he said, "but our staff feels someone else was the instigation." He cited the demolition of the telephone tower and a roadside explosion that wounded a policeman as proof that the violent acts required more sophistication than could be expected from teenagers.
A prominent local political figure was killed in Ghazni Province, south of Kabul, in an attack that the governor, Asadullah Khan, attributed to Taliban insurgents. Two of the attackers were killed and seven arrested, the Bakhtar news agency reported.
Three people were killed and two injured by another roadside bomb, further south in Zabul Province, on Wednesday, said an official in the governor's office, who added that Taliban insurgents were suspected there as well.
Hundreds of students from Kabul University and Kabul Polytechnic demonstrated in the capital, Kabul, but with a heavy police presence, their protest remained peaceful. They blocked traffic for an hour outside the university as they chanted anti-American slogans and burned an American flag.
Some of the students demanded that the United States interrogators, who are alleged to have placed copies of the Koran in a toilet to upset detainees and in one case to have flushed the holy book down the toilet, be arrested and tried by a Muslim court. Desecration of the Koran is punishable by death in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Others said they wanted President Bush to make a formal apology to all Muslims for the sacrilege. Protesters also complained about the continued presence of United States troops in Afghanistan. "The students are calling in one voice: we don't want American bases in Afghanistan," said a medical student, Layek Zakim.
"Those Americans who come to our country and killed students should be arrested and executed," he said, apparently referring to the death of four protesters in Jalalabad on Wednesday, the day after the protest there began. American troops were in the town during the unrest and were blocked from entering their base by an angry crowd.
The soldiers fired into the air to break up the crowd, as did the Afghan police, Colonel Yonts said, but he denied that the soldiers had harmed any of the protesters.
Demonstrations were reported in nine or 10 Afghan towns, including several in northern part of the country, and in the northwest Pakistani city of Peshawar. More protests were announced for Friday and Saturday.
