Afghans killed in protest over NATO night raids
At least a dozen Afghan civilians were shot to death and another 85 wounded in mass protests Wednesday over a NATO night raid that killed four members of a family in the country’s northern Takhar province.
Those killed in the raid, two men and two women, reportedly all members of the same family, are only the latest in a series of unarmed civilian victims, including children, who have lost their lives in similar incidents in recent weeks. A crowd, which at its start was estimated by local journalists at 2,000 peoplemany of them carrying sticks, axes and shovelsmarched into the center of Taloqan, the provincial capital, carrying the bodies of the victims killed in the raid the night before. The protest, which included many students, is reported to have grown to include as many as 15,000 people. The protesters chanted “Death to America” and demanded justice for those killed.
The crowd came under fire as it marched on a NATO Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) base in Taloqan, where a contingent of approximately 25 German troops are deployed. Some of the protesters threw grenades, Molotov cocktails and rocks over the walls of the base, where two German soldiers and three Afghan guards were reportedly injured. German troops reportedly came out of the base, and German reinforcements together with elements of the Afghan National Army were brought in from the neighboring province of Kunduz to quell the protest.