Kabul, December 31: Afghan government investigators Wednesday accused foreign troops of dragging 10 people, including eight children, from their homes and shooting them dead.
Anti-US protests erupted in at least two cities over the alleged killings as President Hamid Karzai’s office published its report, likely to enflame tensions between the Afghan government and its Western military backers.
The presidential investigating team said the dead included eight children, between 13 and 17 years old, said a statement from Karzai’s office. The alleged incident took place late Saturday in the eastern province of Kunar.
International forces based in Kunar and local police told Asadullah Wafa, head of the investigating team and a former governor of Kunar province, that “they were unaware of the incident,” Wafa told AFP.
“A unit of international forces descended from a plane in the Narang district of Kunar province and took 10 people from three homes, eight of them school students in grades six, nine and 10, one of them a guest, the rest from the same family, and shot them dead,” the statement said, quoting Wafa.
Hundreds of university students blocked main roads in Jalalabad, capital of eastern Nangahar province, Wednesday to protest the alleged deaths.
Protesters in downtown Kabul tied green ribbons around their foreheads on which was written in red “stop killing us,” witnesses said. Others chanted “foreigners out” and “death to the murderers of Afghan people”.
–Agencies