COMING under swift viewings and early offers too is No 26, also called Koran, on Highfield Lawn off the Model Farm Road in Cork city.

A veteran Afghan officer shot dead eight Nato troops and a civilian before being killed himself after an argument at Kabul airport today.

Protests erupted in Afghanistan again today over a US pastor’s burning of the Koran – the fourth day of demonstrations against the destruction of Islam’s holy book in a country struggling to beat back an insurgency led by Taliban religious extremists.

Thousands of Afghans staged violent protests today against a tiny American church’s plan to burn the Muslim holy book.

US PRESIDENT Barack Obama last night appealed for religious tolerance amid the Koran-burning controversy.

Thousands of Afghans were protesting today over suspended plans by a small American church to burn the Koran.

US President Barack Obama today urged a Florida pastor to “listen to those better angels” and call off his plan to engage in a Koran-burning protest this weekend.

There is no evidence that American soldiers desecrated the Koran during a raid on an Afghan home, the US military said today.

An Indian imam told today how two brothers suspected over the failed UK terror attacks turned away from mainstream Islam and became more radicalised.

A nursing school was shut down and its Christian principal and four students suspended after Muslim pupils claimed verses from the Koran had been desecrated, officials said today.

Few Iraqi MPs managed to attend a rare emergency legislative session today after a suicide bomber ripped through their cafeteria in a brazen attack inside Baghdad’s US-guarded Green Zone.

Somali government troops rolled into Mogadishu unopposed today, the prime minister said, hours after an Islamic movement that tried to establish a government based on the Koran abandoned the capital and promised to make a stand in southern Somalia.

HUNDREDS of fighters who were battling Somalia’s Islamic militia in the capital surrendered yesterday morning after a surge of violence that killed more than 70 people and wounded 150 since Sunday.

A large explosion today destroyed the golden dome of one of Iraq’s most famous Shiite religious shrines, sending protesters pouring into the streets. It was the third major attack against Shiite targets in as many days.

Pakistani police have arrested a Hindu couple accused of desecrating the Koran, Islam’s holy book, police said in Peshawar today.

PAKISTANIS freed from Guantanamo Bay claimed they saw US interrogators throw, tear and stand on copies of Islam's holy book, and one former detainee said naked women sat on prisoners' chests during questioning.

AN apparent suicide bomb detonated yesterday as hundreds of Shi'ite Muslims recited verses from the Koran during a religious festival at a shrine near Pakistan's capital.

LEBANON mourned assassinated former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri yesterday as opposition leaders bluntly implicated Syria in an attack that Lebanese authorities said might have been a suicide bombing.

As a stunned Lebanon grieved, dozens of angry mourners attacked Syrian workers in the home town of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who was assassinated in a huge bomb blast, while others marched in streets draped with black banners.

With Yasser Arafat in “the final phase of his life”, the Palestinian leader’s political heirs completed his burial arrangements today and made plans for a funeral as soon as Friday.

At least eight children were killed today when a suspected gas explosion collapsed a dormitory at a boarding school in central Turkey.

They did not say a word as they barrelled down the deserted, crater-pocked road at 110mph. For eight hours, their lips moved with verses from the Koran, but no sound emerged.

IN 60 seconds, Street 602 in Baghdad’s Qadissiyah quarter was blasted into a scene from a nightmare, witnesses said yesterday.