A PUBLIC relations exercise went horribly wrong last Friday when the US military dropped a consignment of footballs from a helicopter as a gift to children in Khost province in eastern Afghanistan.

According to an International Herald Tribune report, at least one of the balls carried a small picture of the Saudi Arabian flag. The flag features in Arabic script the Islamic declaration of faith, which contains the words Allah and the Prophet Mohammad.

Villagers were “upset and angry” when they saw the ball, said Khost governor Arsalah Jamal.

They would no doubt have gone on the rampage and set fire to stuff, but grudgingly accepted that the dropped ball exercise was a terrible mistake.

In a grovelling apology to the thin-skinned Sons of the Prophet, Sgt Dean Welch, a spokesman for the US-led coalition, said:

The distribution of soccer balls was done in the spirit of good will, something that we hoped would bring Afghan children some enjoyment. We regret any disturbance that was caused in this case. If we hurt one person, that is one too many.

Jamal said the US military had told him they bought the balls in a market in Kabul and that they were made in China.

Last year, there was outrage in Saudi Arabia over this football (pictured on the right) which not only bore the Saudi flag, but bore it adjacent to the flags of Israel (ouch!) and Denmark, which, at the time, was not exactly flavour of the month throughout the Muslim world because of the Mohammed cartoons hoo-ha.

An email widely circulated in Saudi Arabia when the ball surfaced declared:

This really is an insult and the greatest insult too!