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U.S. troops shot 3 Afghans in crowd -police chief Sayed Salahuddin / Reuters | June 1st 2006 U.S. troops fired into a crowd of stone-throwing rioters, killing at least three Afghans, as their convoy left the scene of an accident that triggered anti-American riots, Kabul's chief of highway police said on Thursday. General Amanullah Gozar told Reuters he had witnessed Monday's incident, from the point when a U.S. military lorry ran out of control down a hill, crashing into vehicles and killing at least five people, to the clashes afterwards, and when U.S. troops opened fire. "As a result of their firing, one young boy and two other people were killed," Gozar said. The U.S. military says small arms fire was heard coming from the crowd, and the crowd overpowered a police line formed to protect the convoy as they tended to injured and collected the damaged vehicle before withdrawing. "Our soldiers thought they were being fired on from the crowd and they fired their weapons in self defence," said Lieutenant Tamara Lawrence, a spokeswoman at the U.S.-led coalition headquarters in Kabul. She said an investigation was still in its early stages. At a news conference a day earlier, Colonel Tom Collins said video footage showed troops fired a machine gun mounted on one of the 12 vehicles in the convoy, but aimed over the heads of the crowd. He said he did not know whether soldiers at any time fired directly into the crowd. The United States and the western-back government of President Hamid Karzai can ill afford the controversy, with an insurgency in the south and east passing through its bloodiest phase since the overthrow of the Taliban government in late 2001. More than 900 people have been killed so far this year, about half of that number in May alone. LAST ONE OUT In the hours that followed Monday's accident, rioters rampaged through Kabul, looting shops, besieging a television station and burning the offices of a U.S. aid group before reaching the gates of parliament and the U.S. embassy. At least seven people were killed in the bloody aftermath of the road crash, and five in the accident itself. Gozar said U.S. soldiers had first fired over the heads of the people, but as the convoy drove off the last vehicle shot directly into the surging crowd. "The last car directly fired at people. Others fired into the air," the highway police chief said. "It was forced to so because some 1,000 people were rushing, some with stones and sticks towards the convoy. I witnessed it." His account of the accident backed up the U.S. military's version that the brakes of the runaway lorry had failed. "The convoy was coming down the pass and the last lorry had brake problem," Gozar said. "It hit a municipality lorry, another car, two cars in the convoy and more cars. In one of the cars four civilians were killed and the lorry finally managed to stop." "People converged on the site with high emotions. Some began throwing stones at the convoy." Afghan parliamentarians have called for U.S. soldiers involved in the accident, and Afghans who led the riots, to be prosecuted under Afghan law. Their call is not binding on the government and U.S. soldiers are considered outside Afghan jurisdiction. Treatment of prisoners, checkpoint shootings, aggressive searches and the way U.S. convoys hog roads have all fuelled resentment in Afghanistan where U.S. intervention ousted the Taliban in 2001. ---------------------------------------------------
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