“I saw the body myself. He is a young man from the protesters,” Doctor Ahmad Ali said, adding that 10 others had been admitted to Jalalabad hospital with gunshot wounds.

In the capital Kabul, at least 11 people were wounded when shots were fired into a crowd of demonstrators trying to march on the city centre to protest the burning of copies of the Koran by NATO troops.

“The Georgian military servicemen died while they were carrying out combat tasks. Their combat vehicle exploded following an insurgent attack,” the ministry said in a statement.

The statement said that the three corporals, named as Valiko Beraia, Ruslan Meladze and Paata Kacharava, died in the volatile Helmand province.

Their deaths take the total number of Georgian troops killed in Afghanistan to 15.

“This is a very painful blow for me especially after my recent visit to Afghanistan, where I saw how bravely they were fulfilling extremely risky tasks,” Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said in a statement.

Saakashvili met troops in Helmand province on Monday and told them that the experience they were gaining was strengthening the army at a time when “our enemy has occupied a part of our homeland” — a reference to the presence of Russian troops in Georgia’s rebel provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Ex-Soviet Georgia is a staunch ally of the United States with ambitions to join NATO and has more than 900 troops serving in Afghanistan — a major contribution from a small country of 4.4 million people.

Georgia’s parliament in December voted to send another battalion to Afghanistan, which will almost double the country’s contingent there.

Tbilisi’s NATO aspirations have infuriated neighbour Russia, which fought a brief war with Georgia in 2008.

Witnesses in Berdale, some 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Baidoa, said the Al-Qaeda allied Shebab withdrew from there late Tuesday, with Ethiopian and Somali forces now moving in to take control.

“Berdale is completely empty this morning, Al-Shebab fighters fled the area and the Ethiopian tanks are very close now, they are in the outskirts,” said Suleiman Mohamed, a resident in Berdale.

“I think there will not be fighting here, as we cannot see any resisting power now.”

Ethiopian troops, who moved into southern and western Somalia in November, began a major push Tuesday towards the southern town of Baidoa, which hosted the transitional parliament before Islamist rebels seized the town in 2009.

Somali fighters battling the Shebab said they had taken Berdale.

“Our forces, and the Ethiopian soldiers assisting them, took control of Berdale — will keep advancing until we seize Baidoa very soon,” said Mohamed Ibrahim Habsade, a lawmaker and military commander with the advancing troops.

“The violent extremists did not fight but just ran away, and we will keep chasing them to eliminate their existence.”

The insurgents have said they have been reinforcing their positions in anticipation of the advance, but Habsade said he was confident the troops could wrest Baidoa from the rebels.

“The attack will not spare a single area under the rule of the terrorists, we will remove them from each and every village and town they control,” he added.

Witnesses in Baidoa said people were fleeing the town towards the rebel-held Afgoye corridor, close to the government-held Somali capital Mogadishu.

“Many people, most of them Al-Shebab families and supporters, are fleeing Baidoa this morning, they are heading towards the Afgoye corridor,” said Hussein Ali, a resident.

“The town is tense because of the approaching forces led by Ethiopia.”

About 500 protesters threw stones at a US military base in Kabul, while in the eastern city of Jalalabad more than 1,000 demonstrators blocked the highway shouting “Death to Americans, Death to Obama”, AFP journalists said.

Afghanistan is a deeply religious country where slights against Islam have frequently provoked violent protests and Afghans were incensed that any Western troops could be so insensitive, 10 years after the 2001 US-led invasion.

In Kabul, the crowd attacked anti-riot police, forcing them to retreat, an AFP photographer said. At least one protester was shot, he said, without being able to identify where the shots came from.

Troops guarding the base, Camp Phoenix, fired in the air, he said, while black smoke from burning tyres rose above the demonstration in the Hod Khail neighbourhood.

A second protest erupted in west Kabul, involving about 100 university students, a police spokesman said, adding that riot police were present and the demonstration was under control.

The Jalalabad protest also involved university students, who chanted “We cannot tolerate insults to the sacred religion of Islam” as they prepared to burn an effigy of US President Barack Obama, an AFP reporter said.

The crowd blocked the key highway from the capital Kabul through the eastern provinces to the Pakistani trade port of Turkham.

On Tuesday, protests erupted in Kabul and outside the US-run Bagram military base, north of the capital, as word spread that NATO troops had burnt copies of the Koran.

The US commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen, apologised and ordered an investigation into an incident in which troops “improperly disposed of a large number of Islamic religious materials which included Korans”.

In an attempt to head off further protests in deeply religious Afghanistan, Allen repeated his apology late Tuesday and said that all troops would be trained in the “proper handling of religious materials no later than March 3″.

For the first time, he admitted that Korans had been burnt, saying they were “inadvertently taken to an incineration facility at Bagram airfield”.

“Along with our apology to the Afghans is our certainty and assurance to them that these kinds of incidents, when they do occur, will be corrected in the fastest and most appropriate manner possible,” said Allen.

“We’ve been shoulder to shoulder with the Afghans for a long time. We’ve been dying alongside the Afghans for a long time because we believe in them; we believe in their country, and we want to have every opportunity to give them a bright future.”

Two US officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP the military removed Korans from the US-run prison at Bagram because inmates were suspected of using the holy book to pass messages to each other.

WGCL television, a local CBS affiliate, quoted Police Chief Warren Summers as saying the incident appeared to be a murder-suicide.

Police confirmed the death toll but were not immediately able to provide further details about the incident.

WGCL said the shooting took place at around 8:40 pm (0140 GMT Wednesday) at the Sujung health spa.

Guards at Bagram airbase, about 60 kilometres (40 miles) north of Kabul, responded by firing rubber bullets from a watchtower, an AFP photographer said as the crowd shouted “Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar” (God is greater).

Hundreds of other people protested in the Afghan capital as security forces dispatched reinforcements in a bid to stop the demonstrations from spiralling out of control in the fiercely conservative, Islamic country.

The US commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen, apologised and ordered an investigation into a report that troops “improperly disposed of a large number of Islamic religious materials which included Korans”.

“I offer my sincere apologies for any offence this may have caused, to the president of Afghanistan, the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, and most importantly, to the noble people of Afghanistan,” he said.

Allen’s remarkably candid statement, apparently aimed at damage limitation after similar incidents led to violence and attacks on foreigners, was played repeatedly on Afghan television.

Allegations that NATO troops working inside the base had set fire to copies of the Muslim holy book were first reported by a senior government official.

A local police official said more than 2,000 people were demonstrating outside the sprawling US-run Bagram base.

“They are demonstrating over the burning of copies of the Koran inside the base,” the official told AFP.

Sidiq Siddiqi, an interior ministry spokesman, confirmed the demonstration and said reinforcements were sent to the area to prevent possible violence.

Another protest by about 500 people broke out in the Pul-e-charkhi district of Kabul not far from major NATO bases on the Jalalabad road, police spokesman Ashamat Estanakzai told AFP.

“The police have the crowd in control, it is not violent,” he said.

Similar protests have in the past turned violent in Afghanistan, an extremely devout Islamic nation where an insult to the religion carries the death penalty.

Some 10 people were killed and dozens of others were injured during days of unrest unleashed last April over the burning of a Koran by American pastor Terry Jones in Florida.

Allen’s statement reflected concern over the impact of the latest incident.

“I have ordered an investigation into a report I received during the night that ISAF personnel at Bagram Airbase improperly disposed of a large number of Islamic religious materials which included Korans,” he said.

“When we learned of these actions, we immediately intervened and stopped them. The materials recovered will be properly handled by appropriate religious authorities.

“We are thoroughly investigating the incident and we are taking steps to ensure this does not ever happen again. I assure you… I promise you… this was NOT intentional in any way.”

Allen thanked “the local Afghan people who helped us identify the error, and who worked with us to immediately take corrective action”.

Another three people were still missing after the accident late Monday in a steel casting workshop owned by state-run Angang Heavy Machinery in the city of Anshan in Liaoning province, a spokesman for parent company Ansteel Group said.

“We’re still searching (for the people missing) and trying to find the cause,” Song Jiachen told AFP.

The 17 injured had been taken to hospital for treatment, the official Xinhua news agency said, citing local officials.

An investigation into the cause of the blast is under way.

Workplace accidents are common in China, where bosses frequently ignore safety rules in the quest for higher profits.

Nearly 50,000 people died in work-related accidents in the first nine months of 2011, down 16 percent from the the same period in 2010, figures from the State Administration of Work Safety show.

General Abdul Raziq, the provincial police chief, said the attacker detonated a bomb-laden sedan at the gate of Kandahar city’s fourth district police station, killing at least one officer.

Another policeman and three civilians were injured, Jawed Faisal, the chief of the government-run Kandahar Media and Information Centre told AFP.

“It was a suicide car bombing that hit the gates of the police station. One police was martyred, one police was injured and three civilians were injured,” Faisal said.

“The civilians were injured in a nearby house which was badly damaged,” he told AFP.

There was no claim of responsibility for the attack but similar bombings in the past have been blamed on the Taliban, which is leading a deadly insurgency to bring down the US-backed government in Kabul.

Kandahar is the birthplace of the Taliban movement. Police and government security forces, trained by the US-led NATO mission in Afghanistan, have been prime targets of insurgents.

Interior ministry spokesman Sediq Siddiqi confirmed the attack but had no further details. “So far, we have one police death,” Siddiqi told AFP.

Witnesses reported “an extremely powerful explosion”.

The Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until they were toppled by the 2001 US-led invasion for refusing to renounce Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Since then, remnants of the regime have orchestrated an increasingly deadly insurgency focused on suicide attacks and roadside bombings that frequently miss their military targets and cause civilian casualties.

The United States and the Taliban, which have opened a liaison office in the Gulf state of Qatar, have confirmed initial talks ahead of possible negotiations designed to end the 10-year conflict.

US media reported that at least eight others were missing in the incident, which took place near Stevens Pass in the Cascade Mountains northeast of Seattle.

“There are initial reports of an avalanche with 3 fatalities in the Tunnel Creek drainage near Stevens Pass Sunday afternoon but details are not yet available,” the Northwest Weather and Avalanche Center said on its website.

King County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Sergeant Cindi West said on Twitter that “at least two” were dead at Stevens Pass, adding: “People missing.”

Two search and rescue missions had headed to the site, she said.

Washington State Patrol trooper Keith Leary told AFP the area was “pretty remote,” and that there was no cell phone reception.

The Northwest Weather and Avalanche Center on Sunday had issued a warning about “high avalanche danger” above 5,000 feet (1,500 meters), and a “considerable” danger below that elevation.

It was not immediately clear the elevation at which the avalanche occurred.

The bomb, in the lawless Khyber tribal district on the Afghan border, was planted by local militant group Lashkar-e-Islam, which is led by warlord Mangal Bagh, said local government official Khalid Mumtaz.

“It was a planted bomb and was detonated when the anti-militiamen reached a private checkpoint” run by the militants, who had deserted the checkpoint, Mumtaz told AFP.

Islamist bombers and gunmen have killed more than 4,800 people across Pakistan since government troops raided an extremist mosque in Islamabad in July 2007.