KABUL, Afghanistan  A fringe Florida preacher may have suspended his Koran-burning, but word reached Afghanistan too late for 24-year-old Muhammed Daoud. He was shot to death during a protest outside a NATO base in western Afghanistan, according to Afghan officials.

Urged on by their religious leaders, Afghans in many locations around the country poured out of their mosques and took to the streets Friday morning, and in most cases the demonstrations remained peaceful. Two of them turned violent, however, in both cases outside NATO reconstruction bases, and a total of at least 12 persons were wounded, three of them critically, in addition to the one who was killed.

Some blamed the intensity of the reaction to the hostility to American and other foreign troops in Afghanistan; others on the seriousness with which Afghans take religion.

In most Muslim countries, the month of fasting for Ramadan is largely observed  with many individual exceptions, at least in private. In Afghanistan, it is universally observed, with no exceptions tolerated.