REUTERS, Faizabad (Afghanistan) :A group of Afghan Muslim clerics threatened on Sunday to call for a holy war against the United States in three days unless it hands over military interrogators reported to have desecrated the Qur’an.

The warning came after 16 Afghans were killed and more than 100 hurt last week in the worst anti-US protests across the country since US forces invaded in 2001 to oust the Taliban for sheltering Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network.

The clerics in the north-eastern province of Badakhshan said they wanted President Bush to handle the matter honestly ‘and hand the culprits over to an Islamic country for punishment.’

‘If that does not happen within three days, we will launch a jihad against America,’ said a statement issued by about 300 clerics, referring to Muslim holy war, after meeting in the main mosque in the provincial capital, Faizabad.

The statement was read out by Abdul Fatah Fayeq, the top judicial official in the mountainous, conservative province near the borders of Tajikistan and China.