Quran protests continued across the world for the second week yesterday as a Briton, a former prisoner held at Guantanamo Bay, claimed guards at the US prison camp had desecrated his copy of the Quran.

More than 100 demonstrators invoking Osama bin Laden and denouncing US President George W Bush gathered in front of the American embassy in London yesterday to protest alleged abuse of the Quran.

The group included a Briton who was held in the US camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and claimed to have witnessed the desecration by American soldiers.

"The soldiers thought I was a dangerous man, a martial artist, so they liked to fight me," Martin Mubanga told the crowd.

"This was one of the methods they used, throwing the Quran, my Quran, on the floor in my cell. This was in the first month at Camp Delta but it is not something that stopped, rather continued and increased," Mubanga said, referring to the permanent detention centre built at Guantanamo Bay.

His statements come in the wake of US magazine Newsweek retracting its report of desecration of Quran by the guards in Guantanamo Bay.

The Red Cross said that on multiple occasions between early 2002 and mid-2003 detainees at Guantanamo Bay alleged that the Quran was being disrespected.

In Palestine, more than 2,000 demonstrators held aloft a giant mock-up of the Quran and Hamas flags as they marched through the West Bank city of Nablus in a protest organised by the radical Islamist group.

Around two thousand people in Lebanon took to streets to protest the desecration.

In Iran, the faithful follwed a call by the authorities for a protest against the alleged desecration after Friday prayers, official media said. At the end of Friday prayers in Tehran, thousands shouted "death to America" and "death to Israel".

Violence marred a demonstration in the southern Iraqi town of Nassiriyah, where four Muslims and four police and soldiers were wounded by gunshots, medical sources said.

Protests were also held in Indian cities of Delhi, Calcutta, and Mumbai. In Calcutta, Muslim protesters burned and ripped US flags and a boy urinated on it.

In Pakistani towns of Lahore, Peshawar and Karachi where angry protesters burned the US flag and effigies of US President George Bush.

In Malaysia, police broke up a protest by 200 Muslims who demanded that the United Nations probe the desecration of Quran.

In Somalia, thousands gathered in downtown Mogadishu and denounced the alleged desecration of the Quran.

PHOTO CAPTION

Pakistani Muslim boys read the Quran at a madrassa or religious school in Wana, the main town of Pakistan's South Waziristan tribal region, 360 km (224 miles) west of capital Islamabad May 18, 2005. (REUTERS)