In Afghanistan, eleven people including two police officers were killed and 13 others wounded when firing broke out during a mass demonstration in a Southern town over the alleged burning of Koran by foreign troops. Deputy provincial police chief Kamal Din khan said the shooting of the protesters occurred on Tuesday after an Afghan national guard was killed by gunfire from the demonstrators side in Garmshir of Helmand province. More than a thousand Afghan villagers gathered to protest, allegedly organized by the Taliban’s shadow governor for Garmshir. The police official said Taliban were provoking the people by telling them that the Americans and their Afghan partners are killing innocent people, bombing their homes and blaspheming their religion and culture.Meanwhile, the United Nations has said that 2,412 Afghan civilians were killed by militants and NATO-led troops in Afghanistan in 2009, the highest number since the ouster of the Taliban regime in 2001. The number represented a 14 per cent increase over 2008. About 1,630 of the deaths were attributed to Taliban-led militants, an increase of 40 per cent from 2008 while there was a 28 per cent reduction in civilian killings by NATO-led troops.