KANDAHAR, Jan 13, (Agencies): Nine people were killed when shooting broke out during a mass demonstration in a provincial Afghan town over the alleged burning of a Quran by foreign troops, police said Wednesday.
The violence erupted on Tuesday in the Garmsir district of the southern province of Helmand over rumours that NATO-led forces had defiled a copy of the Muslim holy book during a military operation, local residents and police said.
NATO said it had no information confirming the civilian deaths, but that it was investigating the incident along with Afghan security officials.
“Eight protesters were killed when the protesters attacked national security officials in Garmsir,” deputy provincial police chief Kamaluddin Khan told AFP.
The protesters were shot after an Afghan guard outside a nearby building was killed by gunfire “from the demonstrators’ side,” he said. Khan said 13 civilians and two Afghan policemen were also wounded in the incident.
NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement on Tuesday that its troops had shot dead only one “insurgent sniper” who had killed an Afghan official in the Garmsir area. But a spokesman for the force said there was no information to back up claims of civilian deaths in the incident, adding that investigations with Afghan security officials were under way.
“We are continuing with our investigation of the reports that have appeared in media,” Sergeant Jeff Loftin said on Wednesday.
“The only shot we know that was fired was from a compound rooftop. The gunman was positively identified as a sniper and we took him out.
“Other than that we don’t know of any other shooting or where these figures come from,” he said.
ISAF said in a statement on Tuesday that during the protest, “an insurgent sniper shot an Afghan official who was within FOB (Forward Operating Base) Delhi in Garmsir district”.
“ISAF service members identified the insurgent sniper, shot and killed him. There were no other injuries or shots fired,” it added.
The incident occurred when more than 1,000 Afghan villagers gathered in Garmsir to protest over the alleged burning of a Quran during a NATO operation on Monday, local residents and police said.
Blasts
Meanwhile, two US soldiers and five Afghans were killed in bomb blasts in Afghanistan on Wednesday, as the UN reported the deadliest year yet for war-weary civilians caught in a spiralling Taleban-led insurgency.
Also Wednesday, a suicide truck bomb rocked a southern Afghan town, injuring several people, a day after nine people died as violence erupted at a protest against an alleged desecration of the Quran by foreign forces, police said.
The two US soldiers assigned to the NATO’s International Security Assistance Force were killed in a home-made bomb explosion in eastern Afghanistan, the force said, without giving the exact location.
“Two ISAF service members from the United States were killed today as a result of an IED (improvised explosive device) strike in eastern Afghanistan,” the force said in a statement.
The deaths took to 17 the number of foreign forces killed in Afghanistan since the start of the year, according to an AFP tally based on that kept by the independent icasualties.org website.
Four Afghan military engineers and a civilian were killed, meanwhile, when a bomb device they were trying to defuse went off in the eastern province of Khost, said Zahir Wardak, a senior military official.
In southern Kandahar province, a hub of Taliban activity, a militant detonated a truck bomb near government installations in Daman district, injuring three police and as many civilians, the interior ministry said.
The bomber apparently tried to enter the district headquarters “but failed for some reason and instead exploded outside the gate,” Sardar Mohammad Zazai, the Kandahar provincial police chief, told AFP.
Civilians are increasingly being caught in the crossfire of the Afghan war, the United Nations said in a report on Wednesday, with 2,412 killed in 2009, the highest toll since the US-led invasion in late 2001.
This is up 14 percent from the 2,118 civilians who died in 2008, and the vast majority of the dead were killed in Taliban attacks, the UN’s Mission for Afghanistan (UNAMA) said in its report.
The report said 70 percent of last year’s civilian deaths, or 1,681, were in insurgent attacks, while pro-government forces including NATO and US troops were responsible for 25 percent, or 596 civilian deaths last year.
Civilian casualties are a source of tension between the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai and the international forces fighting the insurgency.
Karzai uses the issue to press home his authority, draw support for his unpopular government while criticising the tactics of the foreign forces.
The UN report also highlighted the “cultural insensitivity” of some foreign troops. The report’s release comes a day after nine people were reported killed in a protest in southern Helmand province’s Garmsir district.