Twelve Afghans killed at anti-NATO protests

Some 3,000 demonstraters chanting anti-NATO slogans took to the streets of Taloqan in Takhar province today, amid different accounts of who had been killed during a NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) overnight raid.

NATO says those killed last night – including two women – were insurgents, but protesters and local police say they were all civilians.

Demonstrators reportedly looted shops and tried to attack a German army base, injuring two German soldiers.

The body of one of the four killed in the raid, draped in a green blanket, was held up on a wooden stretcher and rushed through the crowd.

Police and Afghan security guards opened fire to disperse the crowd after the violence mounted.

“There is no more room in the hospital, it is already packed with wounded,” Hassan Baseej, head of the provincial hospital, told Reuters news agency.

ISAF said in a statement the two women who had been killed were both armed, one with an explosives-packed suicide vest.

“A woman wearing a chest rack and armed with an AK-47 rifle attempted to engage the force. The security force gave numerous verbal warnings, but when the armed female pointed her weapon at them, she was subsequently killed,” the statement said.

“Another woman then came out of the compound waving a pistol at troops, the security force engaged the female resulting in her death,” it continued.

Shah Jahan Noori, Takhar province police chief, who lives near the site of the night-time raid in Taloqan, said there were no insurgents in the area. He said only Afghan civilians had been killed and the raid had been based on “false intelligence.”

“This will only create distance between ordinary people, the government and its international partners,” he said.

Read more: Afghanistan special report

Earlier, Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the killing of what he said were four family members by NATO troops.

Mr Karzai asked for an explanation from General David Petraeus, the commander of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan.

“Despite repeated warnings from the Afghan President to prevent wayward operations by NATO troops, it seems such incidents have not been stopped,” a statement issued by the presidential palace said.

The incident comes a week after NATO troops killed three young Afghan civilians.

Foreign troops killed a 10-year-old girl and wounded four other children when responding to gunfire in eastern Kunar on Monday, the provincial governor said.

On Saturday, ISAF said its troops mistakenly killed a 15-year-old boy during an operation with Afghan forces to capture a Taliban fighter in eastern Nangarhar province.

ISAF also apologised for the death of a teenage woman and an Afghan policeman last Wednesday during a joint raid by Afghan and foreign troops on a compound in Nangarhar.

Meanwhile, 13 people have been killed and 20 others injured after a suicide bomber hit a minibus carrying police cadets in eastern Afghanistan.

The attack took place at around 4:45 pm (1215 GMT) in the eastern province of Nangarhar, just outside the city of Jalalabad. The Taliban claimed responsibilty for the attack.

In north west Pakistan 100 fighters have attacked a security checkpoint near the Pakistani city of Peshawar, sparking a three-hour clash that killed two police officers and 17 gunmen, police said.

“They were armed with AK-47 rifles and rockets. We successfully repulsed the first attack. They attacked again and then there was an exchange of fire that lasted for about two and a half hours,” Abdul Jabbar, a security official, told Reuters on Wednesday.

In a similar incident on Tuesday in Quetta, the capital of restive south western Baluchistan province, Pakistani troops killed five attackers, including three women, after a firefight