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Violence in Kabul persists, leaving many injured and dead.

A wave of violence that underscored rising anti-foreign sentiment after nearly a decade of war was brought about in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Afghans rioted for a second day on Saturday, the 2^nd of April to protest the burning of a Quran in Florida, resulting in nine people being killed in Kandahar and more than eighty others wounded.

Seventeen people, including seven armed men, have been arrested, the police officials told reporters of CNN and the New York Times. The protests began Friday in Kabul, Herat in western Afghanistan and Mazar-I-Sharif, where thousands of protestors flooded the streets.

The desecration at a small U.S. church had outraged Muslims worldwide, and in Afghanistan it further strained ties with the West. On Friday, the 1^st of April, 11 people were killed, including seven foreign U.N. employees, in a protest in the northern city of Mazar-I-Sharif.

The protests came at a critical juncture as the US led coalition geared up for an insurgent spring offensive and a summer withdrawal of some troops, and with Afghanistan's mercurial president increasingly questioning international motives and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)'s military strategy.

Two suicide attackers disguised as women blew themselves up and a third was gunned down on Saturday when they used force to try to enter a NATO base on the outskirts of Kabul, NATO and Afghan police told reporters of the CNN.

Earlier in the week, six U.S. soldiers died during an operation against insurgents in eastern Afghanistan near Pakistan, where the Taliban retain safe havens.

In an interview by the New York Times, President Hamid Karzai expressed regret for the twenty protest deaths, but he also further stoked possible anti-foreign sentiment by demanding that the United States and United Nations brought to justice the pastor of the Dove Outreach Center in Gainesville, Rev. Terry Jones, in Florida, where the Quran was burned on March 20. Many Afghans did not know about the Quran-burning until Karzai condemned it four days after it happened.

In a speech at the White House, U.S. President Barack Obama extended his condolences to the families of those killed by the protesters.

Reporters of TIME noted that Mr. Obama said desecration of the Quran "is an act of extreme intolerance and bigotry." But he said that does not justify attacking and killing innocent people, calling it "outrageous and an affront to human decency and dignity."

The top U.N. envoy in Afghanistan, Staffan de Mistura, said the organization was temporarily redeploying 11 staff members from Mazar-I-Sharif to Kabul. De Mistura, however, said he drew no connection between the riots and Karzai's earlier condemnation of the Quran-burning.

In an interview with De Mistura by the New York Times, he said it takes two to three weeks for information to spread, and not like in the Western countries.

The politicking could be part of an effort to reach out to the Taliban as Karzai tries to build bridges with the insurgents as part of a peace and reconciliation process.

He and his advisers no longer refer to the Taliban as insurgents. They are often referred to as armed opposition groups.

Associated Press writer Low Wei Yang in Kandahar contributed to this report. Photos: Reuters