Newsweekmagazine has said it erred in a report last week that claimed US interrogators desecrated the Koran at Guantanamo Bay.
It apologised yesterday to the victims of protests in Muslim countries sparked by the article.
The magazine's editor, Mr Mark Whitaker, said the magazine inaccurately reported that US military investigators had confirmed personnel at the detention facility in Cuba had flushed the Muslim holy book down the toilet.
"We regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the US soldiers caught in its midst," Mr Whitaker wrote in the magazine's latest issue, due to appear on US newsstands today.
The report sparked angry and violent protests across the Muslim world from Afghanistan, where 16 were killed and more than 100 injured, to Pakistan to Indonesia to Gaza.
In the past week, it was condemned in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Malaysia and by the Arab League. Afghan Muslim clerics threatened to call for a holy war against the United States yesterday.
The weekly news magazine said in its May 23rd edition that the information had come from a "knowledgeable government source" who told Newsweekthat a military report on abuse at Guantanamo Bay said interrogators flushed at least one copy of the Koran down a toilet in a bid to make detainees talk.
But Newsweeksaid the source later told the magazine 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 or drafts.
Mr Whitaker said Newsweekdid not know if the reported toilet incident involving the Koran ever occurred. "We're not saying it absolutely happened but we can't say that it absolutely didn't happen either."