KABUL, Afghanistan: The Afghan government was facing severe condemnation Wednesday from Shiite leaders after it quietly dumped more than 1,000 Shiite texts and other books into a river.

The news of throwing the books into River Helmand was leaked a month after the dumping.

A prominent Shiite member of parliament Mohammad Akbari said:"It is a humiliation for all Shiites." He said a joint commission of Sunni and Shiite leaders should have reviewed any complaints about the books.

Merchants who'd ordered the books for shops in Kabul said there was nothing offensive about their content and that they were destroyed simply because of prejudice against Shiites.

Shiites were persecuted under the Taliban regime that ruled the country until the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

Many Afghan Shiites are ethnic Hazaras.

The latest episode started six months ago when a container full of books arrived in western Nimroz province from neighboring Iran, said Nimroz governor's spokesman, Haaji Nazir.

Nestled among boxes of computer and English instruction manuals were more than 1,000 history and religious books about Shiite Islam, Nazir said.

"He has no respect for the Hazara people," said Mohammad Ibrahim Sharyati, who said he lost about 2,600 books worth about $40,000.

After seizing the books, authorities in the western province held them at a customs warehouse and sent samples to the Information and Culture Ministry in the capital for a ruling.

A commission found that at least some of the books were "dangerous to the unity of Afghanistan", said Deputy Culture Ministry Aleem Tanwir.

"They included incorrect statements about the advice of Prophet Muhammad," Tanwir said.

"We contacted the governor of Nimroz and we told him that he cannot allow these books in Afghanistan," Tanwir said.

He said the ministry agreed to the idea of dumping the books in the river along the Iranian border as an alternative to burning.

About 2,600 history, geography and cultural books were destroyed, along with about 600 Shiite religious books, according to Sharyati and Ahmadi, a bookseller who had ordered the Shiite texts. Ahmadi declined to give his full name out of fear of government reprisal.