The anger over the American military’s burning of Korans this week claimed at least 10 more lives on Friday as rage continued to explode across the country and began to reverberate in international policy.

Ten Afghan civilians protesting the Koran burnings died Friday, most of gunshot wounds, although one protester was trampled to death, bringing the death toll since Tuesday, when the violence started to 24, according to local officials and emergency room doctors.

Meanwhile, fresh demonstrations erupted in at least six provinces on Saturday, a fifth day of protests. In Laghman, a normally quiet province to the east of Kabul, about 2,000 protesters marched on the governor’s residence, the police said, in what an official described as a tense and violent situation, with reports of gunfire. Farther north in Sar-e-Pol, a large crowd gathered at a main mosque to hear mullahs preaching, according to Asadullah Khuram, deputy head of the provincial council.

An apology by President Obama on Thursday failed to keep thousands off the streets in Kabul and around the country. In light of that apology, which was attacked by Republican critics, the United States postponed plans to apologize to the Pakistani government for the killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers last November at a border base, in order to avoid further political fallout in an election year, a Defense Department official said.

After German soldiers were pelted with stones by an angry crowd in Takhar Province, in northern Afghanistan, the German military decided to withdraw its soldiers from a small base there several weeks earlier than planned. The base had just 50 soldiers, so the withdrawal will have little impact, but the early departure appeared symbolic of a growing disengagement by members of the NATO coalition. France announced last month that it would bring home its combat troops in 2013, a year earlier than expected.

It was unclear on Friday night whether, after four days of protests, the violence that has rolled through the country was finally spent, or if the Koran burning had uncorked an inexhaustible well of fury over the continuing presence of Western troops after 10 years of war. In some measure, the angry demonstrations were to be expected in a religious country fed up with foreigners, but the tension this week seems more pervasive and irresolvable than in the past.

“The violence is almost within the normal realm of things that you would see after this kind of incident,” said Martine Van Bijlert, a co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, a policy and research institute in Kabul. “The big question is, how long does it go on? You have to watch who jumps on the bandwagon. It is very intense, and there’s the feeling that all areas need to have had their own demonstration if they haven’t had one yet.”

The worst violence Friday was in Herat Province, in the West on the Iranian border, where seven people were killed. Protesters there were armed and some appeared to be agents provocateurs, government officials said.

“People were on their way home after the prayer when a number of opposition and agitator people, misusing the pure emotions of the people, urged them to go toward the United States Consulate in the city,” said Mohyaddin Noori, the spokesman for Herat’s provincial governor. “On the way to the consulate, some of these riotous people who were armed opened fire and were throwing rocks.”

One of the vehicles hit by gunfire was a police truck full of ammunition, which exploded, sending bullets in all directions and wounding 65 people, he said.

Several Heratis suggested that Iranian agents were at work behind the scenes. Some noted that Radio Mashad, an Iranian station, had urged action against Western interests in Afghanistan, taking advantage of a moment when people’s emotions were running high, said Mohammed Rafiq Shaheer, a professor of political science at Herat University. He noted that protesters appeared to have been directed to march towards the American Consulate by mullahs in several areas of the city.

He said that he blamed Pakistani and Iranian intelligence. Both agencies, he said, “have invested a lot in this country and they have people loyal to them, and this is a perfect time for the intelligence apparatus of the neighboring countries to ignite people’s fiery emotions which would lead them to violence.”

Two protesters died in Khost Province, near the Pakistan border, and one in Baghlan Province.

In Kabul, despite larger numbers of protesters on the streets, only a handful were injured.

Interior Minister Bismullah Khan adopted a nuanced strategy that encouraged the protesters to express themselves peacefully, but also put in place a phalanx of police units to keep the most menacing from making their way to the center of the city.

Riot police officers backed up by heavily armed special units in some 40 police trucks faced down an estimated 4,000 men wielding rocks and sticks after Friday Prayer. At one point as the two groups neared each other, protesters threw rocks and shouted, but the police did not fire and eventually moved the protesters back.

A few of the protesters were waving the Taliban’s white flag, some wore head wrappings bearing the jihad slogan “I sacrifice myself,” and protesters throughout the city shouted “Death to America.”

The police also broke up another crowd of about 1,000 in central Kabul, first by driving trucks into the crowd to disperse it and then by chasing the protesters on foot and hitting them with rubber batons.

Some officers said they did the job despite sympathizing with the protesters.

“We try to stop the demonstrators from violence and looting,” said a Kabul police officer, Azizullah, 40, who uses only one name. “That is our job, but If I were an ordinary person, not a policeman, I would have joined the demonstrations.”

NATO said it was still investigating what led to the decision to burn Korans and other religious texts. Early reports said that the books had inflammatory messages written in them from detained Taliban suspects. Most of the Korans that were rescued from the flames are still at Bagram Air Base in a locked container. They are viewed as evidence, a NATO spokesman said. A few of the Korans were taken out of the base by Afghan employees.

The absence of lethal violence in Kabul belies a deep frustration that appeared in interviews with police officers and protesters alike, a sense that justice has not yet been done and a suspicion that the United States, while apologizing, will not hold anyone to account.

“Just by saying ‘I am sorry,’ nothing can be solved,” said Wali Mohammed, one of the protesters. “We want an open trial for those infidels who have burned our Holy Koran.”

Mohammed Anwar, an off-duty police officer, had joined the protesters on Friday and seemed barely able to contain his fury. “I will take revenge from the infidels for what they did to our Holy Koran, and I will kill them whenever I get the chance,” he said as he walked with crowd of protesters wielding rocks and sticks. “I don’t care about the job I have.”