The Pentagon said on Monday that a recent Newsweek magazine article accusing US personnel at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, of desecrating the Muslim holy book, the Koran, "was irresponsible and had significant consequences that reverberated throughout Muslim communities around the world."

There was no evidence to support the Newsweek story, which "is demonstrably false," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said.

There had been no credible allegations of "willful Koran desecration," and the magazine had produced no such evidence, he said.

A Newsweek story in its issue dated May 9 reported that American military investigators had found evidence that interrogators at the Guantanamo prison facility had flushed a Koran down a toilet, to get inmates there to talk. The article has sparked deadly anti-US protests in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other Muslim countries.

Newsweek Editor Mark Whitaker wrote in the magazine's latest issue, due to be on US newsstand on Monday, that the magazine had made errors in the report on Koran desecration, and apologized for the mistakes.

He wrote that the information for the report had come from a " knowledgeable US government source," and its writers had sought comment from the Pentagon before it was published. The source later told the magazine that he could not be certain he had seen an account of the Koran incident in the military report and that it might have been in other investigative documents, Whitaker added.

The magazine "hid behind anonymous sources, which by their own admission do not withstand scrutiny," and couldn't "retract the damage they have done to this nation or those that were viciously attacked by those false allegations," Whitman said.

Source: Xinhua