U.S. Troops Killed 4 in Kabul Riot, Witness Says

By CARLOTTA GALL and ABDUL WAHEED WAFA

05/31/06 "New York Times' -- -- KABUL, Afghanistan, May 31 — American soldiers involved in a car crash in the capital Monday fired into the crowd of protesters and killed four people, according to the chief of highway police in Kabul, Gen. Amanullah Gozar, who was at the scene.

Three people died in the multiple car crash caused by a runaway United States army truck, he said, and four people died from gunfire from the last vehicle in the convoy, as the American troops extricated themselves from an increasingly hostile crowd, he said.

General Gozar's eyewitness account, given in an exclusive interview, is the first official acknowledgment that American troops directed lethal fire at the crowd.

The deaths of civilians, both in the initial car crash and in the protests that followed, sparked the worst anti-American riots the city has seen since the fall of the Taliban four years ago. Protesters fought police and ransacked offices belonging to foreign organizations across the city, leaving 12 dead, including a policeman, and 138 wounded, according to police figures.

A United States military spokesman, Col. Tom Collins, said he had not heard that the last vehicle had fired into the crowd or that four people had been killed as the result of the shots.

"Our soldiers believed fire was coming from the crowd and they fired their weapons in self defense," he said. He added that troops in one vehicle had fired their weapons over the heads of the crowd.

"We are examining all information; it will all be part of the investigation," Colonel Collins said, adding that all the soldiers would be making statements.

The soldiers, who stayed at the crash scene for 45 minutes until a relief vehicle arrived to tow the broken truck away, had reported that one man was killed in the car crash, and six were wounded, two of them seriously, Colonel Collins said. The soldiers provided medical aid to the injured until ambulances arrived to take them away.

General Gozar, whose house overlooks the main road that runs into Kabul from the north, said he heard loud blasts of a horn on Monday morning and looked out of his window to see the driver of a heavy military truck waving frantically to people to get out of the way. The truck hit a station wagon, then two other military vehicles in the convoy, and finally was swallowed up in a cloud of dust at the bottom of the hill, the general said.

"I can say clearly it was an accident," he said, dismissing rumors that spread through the city that the American troops had deliberately rammed vehicles, or even that they had smashed into his own car.

When he arrived at the scene of the crash, the American soldiers had stopped their convoy and were treating the civilians wounded in the other cars, while others stood guard, General Gozar said. A crowd of shopkeepers and barrow boys gathered and began pelting the soldiers with stones. The police could not contain the crowd and finally the American troops made their escape, he said.

"The first American vehicles were firing in the air, but the last one fired at the people," General Gozar said. As the American troops escaped, leaving four people dead, the crowd turned on the Afghan police, burning one of their cars and stabbing a policeman. The riot quickly spread throughout the city, he said. "People were really angry," he added.

General Gozar, who personally reported the incident to President Hamid Karzai, said that while it was clearly an accident, the behavior of the American troops had contributed to the people's wrath.

Arrogant driving on the roads — driving fast or not allowing cars to overtake a convoy — made people angry, he said. People were also upset when the soldiers prevented them from approaching the crashed cars to help their wounded relatives, the general added.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

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