The demonstrations by more than 1,000 people in Afghanistan’s capital were triggered when a U.S. Army vehicle, traveling as part of a convoy, caused a 12-car pile-up that left five people dead, an Afghan government spokesman said, according to the London Financial Times. It is not clear how many were killed in the auto accident and how many died in the shooting that followed as a crowd gathered at the scene of the crash and soldiers and police met them with gunfire.

“Afghans often complain about what they call the aggressive driving tactics of the U.S. military,” the Associated Press reported May 30. The dispatch quoted 21-year-old shopkeeper Mohammad Wali, who witnessed the crash, saying, “The American convoy hit all the vehicles that were on the way. They didn’t care about civilians at all.”

The U.S. military said in a statement that a brake failure on one of its trucks caused the pile-up.

The confrontations, the worst in the capital since the U.S.-led overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2001, left an estimated 16 dead and 142 wounded, according to the Financial Times. The headquarters of several foreign “aid” agencies, a luxury hotel, and a municipal government building with a portrait of Afghan president Hamid Karzai covering an entire wall were among the structures heavily damaged during the protests.

The demonstrations came on the heels of intense fighting between units loyal to the former Taliban regime and the U.S.-led force of more than 30,000 troops in the country that left more than 350 dead the last half of May.

On May 29, U.S. military officials told the press they have decided to deploy a 3,500-member armored brigade, which had been in reserve in Kuwait, to western Iraq near its 300-mile border with Syria. U.S. military officials say they are beefing up their forces in the Anbar province to push back increasingly effective assaults by elements loyal to the deposed Baath Party regime of Saddam Hussein and their supporters.

According to the May 30 Washington Post, 11 tribal leaders have been assassinated in the area since the end of last year for collaborating with the U.S.-led coalition forces. Another indirect target of the move is the government of Syria, which the Post described as “a conduit for some of the weapons, money and fighters” that U.S. forces encounter there.

Meanwhile, according to witnesses, press reports, and statements by U.S. congressmen briefed on the incident, U.S. Marines indiscriminately killed 24 civilians following the explosion of a roadside bomb that killed a Marine lance corporal on Nov. 19, 2005, at the town of Haditha in western Iraq. “It could be the most gruesome massacre since Vietnam’s Mai Lai killings,” reported the June 5 Army Times, a Pentagon weekly.

According to accounts published in Time magazine and the Washington Post, following the explosion a squad of U.S. Marines burst into three homes along the street and began killing the inhabitants, ranging in age from 1 to 76. They then opened fire on a taxi that happened to turn onto the street, killing four college students and the taxi driver.

The day after the events the Marines released their version of the story. “A U.S. Marine and 15 civilians were killed yesterday from the blast of a roadside bomb in Haditha,” said a November 20 report from a Marine spokesperson. “Immediately following the bombing, gunmen attacked the convoy with small arms fire. Iraqi army soldiers and Marines returned fire, killing eight insurgents and wounding another.”

Sen. John Warner, a Republican from Virginia who is head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the briefings on the incident include “very, very serious allegations, and there have been facts to substantiate the case to underpin those allegations.” Rep. John Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat who was also briefed on the events in Haditha, said, “Marines overreacted…and killed innocent civilians in cold blood.”
 
 
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