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AFGHANISTAN: Coalition troops
killed eight civilians when they opened fire on a crowd after a
suicide car bomb struck a military vehicle in eastern Afghanistan
Sunday, provincial police said.
Elsewhere, the
NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) reported
that two of its soldiers were killed Saturday in combat in the south
of the country, which sees the most violence linked to a Taliban
insurgency.
A large group
of demonstrators gathered to protest the shooting of civilians after
the bombing, in the eastern province of Nangarhar, witnesses said.
“Eight
people have been killed and more than eight were injured. They were
killed in coalition firing after the explosion,” Nangarhar police
spokesman Ghafoor Khan said.
The US-led
coalition force, which operates alongside ISAF, confirmed a patrol
had been struck by a suicide car bomb on the road between the
provincial capital Jalalabad and the town of Torkham on the border
with Pakistan.
A coalition
spokesman did not have any information about casualties and would
not say which troops were involved. US soldiers are deployed in the
east of Afghanistan with ISAF and the smaller coalition.
The interior
ministry in the capital Kabul said it knew of up to eight casualties
in the incident.
“We know
that the troops have fired on people and we know that a number of
people—seven to eight people—have been killed or injured,” an
official in the ministry’s press office told AFP.
The ministry
spokesman, Zemarai Bashary, later told AFP that casualty figures
from the bombing and shootout, in a district about 30 kilometers (20
miles) from the Pakistan border, were still being confirmed.
“At 8:45
a.m. there was a suicide car bombing against a coalition convoy in
Muhmand Dara district of Nangarhar province. As a result of this
attack the suicide bomber is killed and there are some other
casualties but the number will be reported later.
“It is being
said that the coalition forces have opened fire on civilians and as
result a number are injured and some killed as well. Our forces are
on the way to the area.”
There have
been several incidents in Afghanistan in the past weeks in which
foreign soldiers have opened fire on civilians fearing suicide or
other attacks by Taliban militants.
Insurgent
commanders have vowed a new wave of suicide attacks in Afghanistan
this year as part of their al-Qaeda-style campaign against the
US-backed government that was installed after the Taliban regime was
toppled in 2001.
The 37-nation
ISAF gave no details of the killing of its two soldiers, leaving
this announcement to the home country.
Twenty foreign
soldiers have now been killed in Afghanistan this year, most of them
in the volatile south of the country, where Taliban-linked militants
are most active.
Two—an
American and a South Korean—were killed on Tuesday in a suicide
bombing outside a military base being visited by US Vice-President
Dick Cheney.
 --AFP
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