US soldier removed from Iraq for shooting at Quran

The commander also read a letter of apology by the shooter, who has not been identified, while another military official kissed a Quran and presented it to the tribal leaders, according to CNN.

Tribal leaders, dignitaries and local security officials attended the ceremony, while protesters carried banners and chanted slogans, including "Yes, yes to the Quran" and "America out, out."

The military statement called the incident "serious and deeply troubling" but stressed it was the result of one soldier's actions and "not representative of the professionalism of our soldiers or the respect they have for all faiths."

The hard-line Association of Muslim Scholars condemned the shooting and what it said was a belated acknowledgment of the incident, calling it "a hideous act against the book of almighty God and the constitution of the nation and the source of its glory and dignity."

The alliances between Sunni tribes and U.S. forces have been key to a steep decline in violence over the past year. But the Quran incident was the latest in a series of setbacks, including the accidental killings of U.S.-allied fighters, that have raised concerns about the fragility of the support for the American forces.

U.S. troops also have struggled to overcome the perception that they are insensitive to Islamic traditions after several missteps in the early stages of the war in Iraq.

Sheik Eid Majid al-Zubaie, the preacher at the Radwaniyah mosque, said local leaders were outraged over the discovery of the Quran, which he said was shot through and had big dark X's and other graffiti on the pages. But he said they had accepted the military's apology.

"There is not any difference between this soldier and the figure in Denmark who made the caricature drawings against the Prophet Muhammad," al-Zubaie said. "But they apologized and expelled the soldier."

Separately, relatives mourned the deaths of at least five children killed when mortar shells slammed into a neighborhood while they were playing outside in a predominantly Shiite area on the eastern outskirts of Baghdad on Saturday.

Bandaged girls and boys with bloodstained clothes cried as they were packed two to a bed at the hospital to which they were taken in the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City.