Mazar-i-Sharif : Eight foreign employees of the United Nations were killed on Friday in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif after protesters over-ran their compound, police said, in what looks to be the deadliest ever assault on the UN in Afghanistan.
Two of the dead were beheaded by attackers who also burned parts of the compound and climbed up blast walls to topple a guard tower, said Lal Mohammad Ahmadzai, a police spokesman for the northern region.
Over a thousand protesters had flooded into the streets of the normally peaceful city after prayers to denounce the burning of the Quran by a US pastor, and after two or three hours violence broke out.
Police fired into the air in an unsuccessful bid to control the crowd.
A United Nations spokesman confirmed employees had been killed but declined to comment on numbers of dead or their nationalities, saying reports from the scene were confusing. Staffan De Mistura, the top UN diplomat in Afghanistan, has flown to Mazar-i-Sharif to handle the situation personally.
A police source, who declined to be named as he was not authorised to speak to the media, said protesters had stormed into the compound where they attacked the victims.
The chief of the mission in the city was wounded but survived, and the dead included employees of Norwegian, Romanian and Swedish nationalities, he added.
Russia called on the Afghan government and international forces to "take all necessary measures" to protect UN workers in a statement issued by the foreign ministry after the attack.
Death toll
If the death toll given by the Afghan police is correct, it would make it the deadliest attack on the UN in Afghanistan.
The worst previous attack was an insurgent assault on a guesthouse where UN staff were staying in October 2009. Five employees were killed and nine others wounded.
But it was not clear if the killings had any direct link to the insurgency, or were simply a product of broader anti-Western sentence.
