Blast Injures U.S. Soldiers as Riots Rage in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan — A nationwide manhunt was under way on Sunday for the chief suspect in the shooting of two American military officers working in the Interior Ministry, and a grenade thrown by protesters wounded at least six American service members in northern Afghanistan.

The continuing animosity over what American officials now say was the inadvertent burning of several Korans last week at the largest air base here underscored the new challenges to the relationship between Afghanistan and the United States, with no clear
path toward the restoration of mutual trust.

Rioting was less pervasive on Sunday than it had been for the past several days but was still virulent in northern Afghanistan. At least one Afghan demonstrator was killed in clashes with the Afghan police, and several more were injured.

President Hamid Karzai called for calm during a televised news conference on Sunday, his first since the burning of the Korans. It was a time for self-restraint, he said, “so that it does not provide an opportunity for the enemy to take advantage.”

In his address, Mr. Karzai did not offer any new details about the shooting of the two American officers, which happened on Saturday, but he said he understood the decision by NATO to withdraw its advisers from all Afghan ministries in the wake of the attack.

The advisers’ withdrawal cast doubt on one of the most critical parts of the international mission in Afghanistan: the mentoring and training of Afghan forces who are to assume responsibility for security and the war against the Taliban after the United States pulls out its combat troops.

The shooting occurred in the National Police Coordination Center, a high-security area of the Interior Ministry that only an elite group of Afghan officers had access to by entering a special code. The center handles information on security developments from across the country. Military officials said that until the investigation was completed, they could not be certain whether the two officers —Lt. Col. John D. Loftis, 44, of Paducah, Ky., of the Air Force, and a major not yet identified by the Defense Department — were armed, but that they would not have been expecting an attack.

According to three Afghan security officials who were familiar with the case but who asked not to be identified because of the matter’s political delicacy, the main suspect is an Afghan, Abdul Saboor, a driver for senior officials who had worked in the ministry for several years. Hired as a noncommissioned officer, he won the trust of his bosses and the ministry’s foreign advisers and had been granted access to the coordination center, they said. He is an ethnic Tajik from Parwan Province and is not believed to have any connection to the Taliban, according to people who knew him.

The two American officers were sitting in a small room that has no security cameras and is close to the coordination center. But Mr. Saboor was recorded by other cameras in the building, said Sediq Sediqi, the Interior Ministry spokesman. He apparently entered the room where the officers were sitting and shot them in the head; the pistol used to kill them was equipped with a silencer, two of the Afghan officials said.

After the shootings, Mr. Saboor was apparently able to leave the ministry without complications, the officials said, suggesting to some that he might have had help. He had behaved oddly in recent months, two officials said, and about five months ago he was fired after prolonged absences. But he was later reinstated for reasons that were not clear.

Afghan officials acknowledged that the killings were a serious breach of trust that could undermine the training mission, and they said they were working hard to find the killer.

“We have a search operation under way in every part of Afghanistan,” said Mr. Sediqi. Another senior ministry official said that the authorities were reasonably sure that Mr. Saboor had not left the country.