Kandahar, Afghanistan–Four civilians were killed when US soldiers fired on a bus in Afghanistan on Monday, sparking furious protests and an expression of regret from the military alliance.
About 200 men took to the streets of Kandahar to protest at the killings on a highway outside the southern Afghan city, burning tires and shouting "Death to America, death to Karzai, death to this government."
Hours later, three Taliban militants wearing suicide vests and carrying guns tried to storm the office of Afghanistan’s premier spy agency in Kandahar, sparking a shoot-out with security forces.
The incidents reflected chronic insecurity in the province of Kandahar, where US-led military forces are preparing a major push to dislodge the Taliban from their spiritual capital.
The Afghan government said a woman and child were among the dead and 18 others were wounded in the shooting, which occurred when the bus neared a NATO convoy on the highway linking Kandahar and the western province of Herat.
NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said soldiers could not identify the bus as it approached the slow-moving military convoy at speed before dawn.
The patrol "warned off" the vehicle once with a flashlight and three times with flares, "which were not heeded," it said in a statement.
"Perceiving a threat when the vehicle approached once more at an increased rate of speed, the patrol attempted to warn off the vehicle with hand signals prior to firing upon it," it added.
The governor of Kandahar, Tooryalai Wesa, and a Western military official in Kabul both told AFP that the soldiers were American.
President Hamid Karzai condemned the shooting, saying it was "an act against NATO’s commitment to protect civilians and is by no means justifiable".
NATO said it "deeply regrets" the deaths.
Its soldiers treated five wounded people at the scene while 13 others received treatment from local medics, it added.
Civilian casualties are a source of anger among Afghans and are often used by politicians and the Taliban to whip up public opposition to the 126,000 US and NATO troops based in the country.
Karzai said NATO should take "serious precautions" to avoid further deaths.
General Stanley McChrystal, the head of NATO and US troops in Afghanistan, is trying to implement a sweeping new counter-insurgency strategy but civilian casualties have undermined efforts to win Afghan hearts and minds.
Despite high-profile reporting of civilian deaths by foreign forces, the UN has blamed the Taliban for the majority of fatalities among ordinary Afghans.
Five people, including two children and a woman, were killed in the southwestern province of Farah on Monday when their car hit an explosive device intended for NATO and Afghan troops, the provincial government said.
In Kandahar, the bus driver, who gave his name as Esmate and escaped unhurt, said he was about 70 to 100 metres (yards) from the military convoy when the shooting started.
"They opened fire at us and I fell unconscious. The people who were killed were sitting in the seats just behind me," he said.
Another witness, Gul Mohammad, said he heard the firing and saw the bus skid, alleging that the soldiers "opened fire for no reason".
After the incident, three militants wearing suicide vests tried to attack the National Directorate for Security (NDS) intelligence compound in Kandahar, triggering a deadly gunfight, the provincial government said.
"One of them managed to detonate, the second was shot dead and the third one was injured and later captured by our security forces," governor Wesa told a news conference.
The attacker who survived told interrogators that their target was the spy service headquarters, the governor added.
He said that nine people, including five children, were injured in the bombing and gunfight, which was later claimed by the Taliban.
