ကုရ္အာန္ ….. အီရတ္တြင္ အေမရိကန္ လက္ေျဖာင့္တပ္သား အတြက္ ဓါးစာခံ

the bullet-riddled Qur'an was found with graffiti inside
 the cover on a small-arms range near a police station
in the village of Radwaniya.(AMSI photo)

မြတ္စလင္မ္မ်ားအထြတ္အျမတ္ထားေသာ ကုရ္အာန္က်မ္းစာအုပ္ အားေသနတ္ပစ္ေလ့က်င္ရာ ပစ္မွတ္အျဖစ္ထားျပီး ေသနတ္ပစ္ ေလ့က်င့္ခဲ့ေသာ အေမရိကန္စစ္သားအား အီရတ္ႏိုင္ငံက ဖယ္ရွားခဲ့

BAGHDAD — An American soldier has been removed from Iraq after using a copy of the Qur'an as a target in a shooting practice, riddling the Muslim holy book with bullets.

"Coalition commanders have briefed local leaders on the results of the investigation and expressed their deep regret," US military spokesman Colonel Bill Buckner said in a statement cited by Agence France Presse (AFP) on Sunday, May 18.

"They have also undertaken disciplinary action against the soldier who was involved and he has been removed from Iraq."

The soldier, who remained unnamed, was sent home for using the Qur'an for target practice in a predominantly Sunni area west of Baghdad.

The action, which happened on May 9, was discovered two days later when Iraqi police found the bullet-riddled Qur'an with graffiti inside the cover on a small-arms range near a police station in the village of Radwaniya.

Beside being removed from Iraq, it was not clear what disciplinary action was being taken against the soldier.

The incident was first reported by CNN which broadcast a ceremony at which the top American commander in Baghdad apologized to tribal leaders in Radwaniyah.

"I come before you here seeking your forgiveness," Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond told the tribal leaders on Saturday, May 17.

"In the most humble manner I look in your eyes today and I say please forgive me and my soldiers."

Another military official, Colonel Ted Martin, kissed a copy of the Qur'an and touched to his forehead as he handed it to the tribal leaders.

Heinous

The apologetic American commanders were met by hundreds of angry Iraqi protestors.

"Yes, yes to the Qur'an" and "America out, out," the demonstrators chanted as they carried banners and slogans condemning the American troops.

In a speech on behalf of Radhwaniya tribal leaders, Sheikh Hamadi al-Qirtani called the incident "aggression against the entire Islamic world."

There was no immediate reaction from the government of Prime Minister Nuri al- Maliki.

The Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), the highest Sunni religious authority in Iraq,blasted the soldier's actions.

"We condemn this heinous crime against God's holy book," the AMS said in a statement.

"AMS holds the occupation and the current government fully responsible for this violation."

The Qur'an shooting is the latest and the most serious known incident of desecrating Muslim holy symbols in Iraq by American troops, according to AFP.

Since the 2003 US-led invasion, there had been several accusations against the US soldiers of attacking and defiling mosques.

In November 2004, the killing of nearly 40 unarmed Iraqis inside a mosque in the northern city of Fallujah by a US marine battalion prompted widespread international condemnation

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