BAGHDAD (AFP) — A major Sunni party, headed by Iraq's vice president, on Monday demanded tough government action against a US soldier who fired bullets into the Koran, the Muslim holy book.
The desecration was also strongly condemned by the Association of Muslim Scholars, which claims to represent more than 3,000 mosques, and which held both the US military and Iraqi government responsible.
Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi's party said in a statement: "The Iraqi Islamic Party demands that the US administration deal firmly with this desecration and also calls on our government to have a position in keeping with the enormity of this humiliation."
There was no immediate reaction from the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki but the American army staff sergent, who pumped bullets into the Koran and wrote graffiti inside it, has already been removed from Iraq.
US military authorities in Iraq have apologised to the local community where last week, the soldier fired bullets into the Koran during shooting practice.
Major General Jeffrey Hammond, the top commander of US forces in Baghdad, on Saturday met community leaders from Radhwaniya in the capital's western outskirts and offered an apology.
US military spokesman Colonel Bill Buckner said the military viewed the incident "as both serious and deeply troubling," but stressed it was an "isolated incident and a result of one soldier's actions".
The Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq said in a statement: "This heinous crime shows the hatred that the leaders and the members of the occupying force have against the Koran and the (Muslim) people."
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