Highway massacre sparks anti-US protests in Afghanistan

The killings took place on a main highway between the Afghan town of Jalalabad and the Pakistani border after a suicide bomber detonated a car loaded with explosives near a convoy of US Marines.

Both eyewitnesses to the incident and some Afghan officials described the US troops firing indiscriminately at civilians in their vehicles and on foot in angry retaliation for the suicide attack.

A military spokesman claimed that the civilians were “caught in the crossfire,” and that the car bomb was part of a “complex ambush involving enemy small arms fire from several directions.”

Responding according to the occupation force’s standard script, the spokesman, Lt. Col. David Accetta, issued a cynical statement declaring that “the terrorists demonstrated their blatant disregard for human life by attacking coalition forces in a populated area, knowing full well that innocent Afghans would be killed and wounded.”

Witnesses, however, said that the only fire came from the American troops. Doctors who treated the wounded said that all of wounds were caused by bullets and none by shrapnel from the bomb blast.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2007/mar2007/afgh-m05.shtml