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BAGRAM, Afghanistan — As thousands of angry Afghans flung rocks at NATO's largest military base in Afghanistan yesterday, American officials sought to quell a widening furor over what they said was the accidental incineration by US military personnel of copies of the Islamic holy book. The protests erupted early yesterday, after Afghans working at Bagram air base told local residents that a number of copies of the Koran had been burned. When they carried out the charred pages, waving the evidence in the air, the crowd grew larger and more defiant.

BAGRAM, Afghanistan — As thousands of angry Afghans flung rocks at NATO's largest military base in Afghanistan yesterday, American officials sought to quell a widening furor over what they said was the accidental incineration by US military personnel of copies of the Islamic holy book. The protests erupted early yesterday, after Afghans working at Bagram air base told local residents that a number of copies of the Koran had been burned. When they carried out the charred pages, waving the evidence in the air, the crowd grew larger and more defiant.

KABUL, Afghanistan - The Red Cross criticized the way the United States handles prisoners at the highly secretive Bagram military base, urging reforms yesterday that would allow detainees to introduce testimony in their defense. The criticism of the prison, which few outsiders have seen, goes to the heart of the system the Bush administration uses to justify holding detainees outside the United States. Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said many of the 600-plus detainees at Bagram complain they do not know why they are being held.

KABUL, Afghanistan - The Red Cross criticized the way the United States handles prisoners at the highly secretive Bagram military base, urging reforms yesterday that would allow detainees to introduce testimony in their defense. The criticism of the prison, which few outsiders have seen, goes to the heart of the system the Bush administration uses to justify holding detainees outside the United States. Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said many of the 600-plus detainees at Bagram complain they do not know why they are being held.

BAGRAM, Afghanistan -- As head of the joint chiefs of staff, General Richard Myers usually doesn't have to take a back seat to anyone -- except when US troops make up the audience and comedian Robin Williams is on stage. American forces serving at the Bagram air base got a little early Christmas cheer yesterday as Myers and Williams -- along with former NFL quarterback John Elway, model/sports commentator Leann Tweeden, and comedian Blake Clark -- stopped by on a tour. The activities got off to a somber start with a groundbreaking ceremony for a coffee shop to be named after Pat Tillman,...

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Two US soldiers have been charged with assault for allegedly punching two detainees in the chest, shoulders, and stomach at a military base in Afghanistan, the military said yesterday. The announcement was made 10 days after the military launched an investigation into television footage purportedly showing a group of US soldiers burning the bodies of two dead Taliban rebels. The charges against the two soldiers include conspiracy to maltreat, assault, and dereliction of duty.

FOXBOROUGH -- Larry Izzo recognized the dead man's face. He didn't want it to be so. It didn't seem possible. He'd just been joking with the guy a few days earlier, showing him a diamond-encrusted Super Bowl ring as they regaled each other with stories from two fields of combat. One a football field. The other a killing field. Larry Izzo understands the difference now; that reality hit when Larry Izzo realized David Connolly was dead. Connolly, a Suffolk County assistant district attorney, was killed April 6 when his CH-47 Chinook helicopter crashed in bad weather about 80 miles south of...

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A US military helicopter returning from a mission smashed into the southern Afghan desert yesterday, killing at least 16 people in the deadliest military crash since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001. The US military said today that 13 victims were American military personnel and the three others were contractors for the US government. The CH-47 Chinook was returning to the US base at Bagram from a mission in the militant-plagued south when it went down near Ghazni city, 80 miles southwest of the capital, Kabul.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- US airstrikes and ground troops killed 12 insurgents who had attacked a coalition patrol in eastern Afghanistan's border region in the latest wave of fighting with Taliban-led rebels, the US military said yesterday. The United Nations called for Afghan human rights investigators to be allowed into Bagram, the main US base in Afghanistan, after The New York Times reported poorly trained US soldiers there had repeatedly abused prisoners. President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, on the eve of today's meeting with President Bush in Washington, said he was angry...

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Intelligence reports indicated that the Taliban had the ability to carry out suicide attacks near the main US base in Afghanistan even before a bloody bombing during a visit by Vice President Dick Cheney, NATO said yesterday. Colonel Tom Collins, the top spokesman for NATO's force in Afghanistan, said suicide bomb cells were present in the capital, Kabul, just 30 miles south of Bagram Air Base. "We know for a fact that there has been recent intelligence to suggest that there was the threat of a bombing in the Bagram area," Collins told reporters.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Two US soldiers have been charged with assault for allegedly punching two detainees in the chest, shoulders, and stomach at a military base in Afghanistan, the military said yesterday. The announcement was made 10 days after the military launched an investigation into television footage purportedly showing a group of US soldiers burning the bodies of two dead Taliban rebels. The charges against the two soldiers include conspiracy to maltreat, assault, and dereliction of duty.

FOXBOROUGH -- Larry Izzo recognized the dead man's face. He didn't want it to be so. It didn't seem possible. He'd just been joking with the guy a few days earlier, showing him a diamond-encrusted Super Bowl ring as they regaled each other with stories from two fields of combat. One a football field. The other a killing field. Larry Izzo understands the difference now; that reality hit when Larry Izzo realized David Connolly was dead. Connolly, a Suffolk County assistant district attorney, was killed April 6 when his CH-47 Chinook helicopter crashed in bad weather about 80 miles south of...

KABUL, Afghanistan -- US airstrikes and ground troops killed 12 insurgents who had attacked a coalition patrol in eastern Afghanistan's border region in the latest wave of fighting with Taliban-led rebels, the US military said yesterday. The United Nations called for Afghan human rights investigators to be allowed into Bagram, the main US base in Afghanistan, after The New York Times reported poorly trained US soldiers there had repeatedly abused prisoners. President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, on the eve of today's meeting with President Bush in Washington, said he was angry about...

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A US military helicopter returning from a mission smashed into the southern Afghan desert yesterday, killing at least 16 people in the deadliest military crash since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001. The US military said today that 13 victims were American military personnel and the three others were contractors for the US government. The CH-47 Chinook was returning to the US base at Bagram from a mission in the militant-plagued south when it went down near Ghazni city, 80 miles southwest of the capital, Kabul.

BAGRAM, Afghanistan -- As head of the joint chiefs of staff, General Richard Myers usually doesn't have to take a back seat to anyone -- except when US troops make up the audience and comedian Robin Williams is on stage. American forces serving at the Bagram air base got a little early Christmas cheer yesterday as Myers and Williams -- along with former NFL quarterback John Elway, model/sports commentator Leann Tweeden, and comedian Blake Clark -- stopped by on a tour. The activities got off to a somber start with a groundbreaking ceremony for a coffee shop to be named...

KABUL, Afghanistan -- The US military named a long-serving brigadier general yesterday to review its secretive Afghan prisons, while officials in Washington disclosed that they were looking into the deaths of two more Afghans. Brigadier General Charles H. Jacoby, deputy operational commander at the US military's main base at Bagram, north of Kabul, will carry out the "top to bottom" review and deliver a report by mid-June, said a spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Tucker Mansager. The commander of the 20,000 US-led soldiers in Afghanistan, Lieutenant General David Barno, ordered the...

CAIRO -- A top Taliban commander said Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was behind the February attack outside a US military base in Afghanistan during a visit by Vice President Dick Cheney, according to an interview shown yesterday by Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera. Bin Laden planned and supervised the attack that killed 23 people outside the Bagram base while Cheney was there, said Mullah Dadullah, the Taliban's main military commander in southern Afghanistan who has had close associations with Al Qaeda.