Afghan killings spark anti-US protests

American troops were accused of firing on a bus killing four civilians in the Afghan region of Kandahar today.

The deaths set off protests across the area, a hotbed of Taliban insurgency.

Another 18 people were wounded in the incident in Kandahar province’s Zhari district. Nato said it was investigating the shooting.

Within hours, scores of Afghans had blocked the main road out of Kandahar city with burning tires, chanting “Death to America,” and calling for the downfall of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, himself a Kandahar native.

“The Americans are constantly killing our civilians and the government is not demanding an explanation,” said resident Mohammad Razaq. “We demand justice from the Karzai government and the punishment of those soldiers responsible.”

Afghan civilians said the convoy that fired on the bus was American, although Nato and Afghan authorities declined to identify them by nationality. Razaq and others claimed the bus was fired on merely because it had pulled up close behind the convoy.

Such popular anger threatens to undercut local support seen as crucial for the success of a long-anticipated allied operation to push the Taliban out of Kandahar, the largest city in southern Afghanistan from which the hard-line Islamic movement emerged as a political and military force in the 1990s.

Kandahar spokesman Ayubi said the provincial government strongly condemned the shooting. A Nato spokesman said the alliance had dispatched a team to the scene to investigate, but did not say whether its troops were responsible.

The top Nato commander in Afghanistan, US Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has issued strict orders to his troops to try to reduce civilian casualties. But these still occur regularly, unleashing raw emotions that highlight a growing impatience with coalition forces’ inability to secure the nation after more than eight years of war.

With troop levels rising amid heightened violence, at least 2,412 Afghan civilians were killed in fighting last year, an increase of 14% from 2008, according to the United Nations.

The UN attributed 67% of those deaths to insurgents who use ambushes, assassinations and roadside bombs to spread terror, undermine development and punish Afghans seen as co-operating with foreign forces and the Karzai government.

Nato earlier this month confirmed that international troops were responsible for the deaths of five people, including three women, killed on February 12 in Gardez, south of Kabul. An Afghan government report on the incident claims US special forces had mistaken their targets and later sought to cover up the killings by digging bullets out of bodies.