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Afghan protesters condemn US-led civilian killings

Afghan protesters have taken to the streets to voice their anger at the foreign forces’ brutal killing of civilians in their homes.

The protesters took to the streets of Gardez, the capital of Paktia Province on Friday — a day after US Special Forces killed two senior government officials and three women in the city.

The demonstrators were carrying the bodies of victims and were chanting anti-occupation and anti-American slogans, a Press TV correspondent reported.

Gholam Dastgir Rostamyar, Paktia’s deputy police chief told reporters that the US Special Forces had carried out the military operation Thursday night on a residence in a village seven kilometers (4 miles) east of Gardez city.

He added that among the dead were a government prosecutor named Dhaher Khan, local intelligence officer and his brother Dawood Khan as well as three women related to them.

The raid took place as the victims were celebrating the birthday of Dawood’s infant son.

The angry locals said the killings had been “deliberate” and called for the legal action against the perpetrators. At one point, they began throwing stones at a convoy of the US-led troops.

The foreign forces have confirmed the incident but described the attack as a counterinsurgency one and claimed in a statement that “several insurgents engaged the joint force in a fire fight and were killed,” read a statement by the US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

The provincial governor’s spokesman said the incident was under investigation.

However, CNN later quoted ISAF as saying that the bodies of two men and two women had been found southeast of Afghanistan, and cited an unnamed senior US military official’s claim that they victims had been shot “execution-style.”

Since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, there have been plenty of fatalities and casualties among the Afghan people.

More than 1,500 civilians were killed in the first half of 2009, which shows a 24 percent increase compared with the same period last year, according to the latest UN report.

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