The question I have now is who was in the crowd that helped to create this riot? Because it wouldn’t take much to bring a crowd to that point, and especially if they had experience doing such a thing in past riots. –Matt
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U.S. Cleared in Afghan Crash That Led to Rioting
August 1, 2010
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and MUJIB MASHAL
KABUL, Afghanistan — The Kabul police have cleared a United States Embassy vehicle of fault for a deadly collision on Friday that set off anti-American rioting near the embassy, a senior police official said Sunday.
After the crash, hundreds of enraged onlookers threw rocks, chanted “Death to America” and set ablaze two American vehicles.
The intensity of the response revealed the deep-seated hostility toward Americans and raised fears of a repeat of the pandemonium that swept the city and left 14 people dead after a fatal crash in May 2006. In that case, a truck in an American convoy plowed into a dozen Afghan cars and killed at least five people.
On Sunday morning, several hundred Afghans marched peacefully through central Kabul to protest both Friday’s collision and the deaths of other civilians caused by American and other Western military forces. Escorted by Afghan police officers, they chanted slogans against the United States, as well as against Iran and Pakistan.
On Friday, initial reports said at least three Afghans had been killed when the American sport-utility vehicle, carrying embassy contractors, struck a car carrying Afghans on the busy thoroughfare that connects the United States Embassy with the Kabul airport. But in an interview Sunday, the head of the Kabul police criminal investigations division, Sayed Abdul Ghaffar, said the Afghan driver had caused the accident. He also said only one Afghan had died in the wreck. The three other people in the car were injured, two seriously, he said.
“It was our civilian car that made the mistake and bears the blame,” Mr. Ghaffar said. “We cannot turn a blind eye to the evidence, although in the heat of the moment we might be tempted.”
Contradicting widely circulated reports from Afghan civilians and some police officers on the scene, Mr. Ghaffar also said that neither the contractors, who worked for DynCorp International, nor the team that responded to evacuate them fired weapons at the demonstrators or the police. According to the embassy, the only time an American fired a weapon was when an occupant of another embassy vehicle that happened to be nearby fired several warning shots in the air.
“The rumors that they fired on our police or on the people are baseless,” Mr. Ghaffar said.
In an interview on Sunday, Zaman Farahi, a friend of the Afghans in the car, identified the passenger who died as a man in his mid-20s named Farhad who worked in the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development.
None of the DynCorp employees, who were working under a State Department contract, were hurt in the crash, but three were injured in the rioting, including one who suffered a concussion.
According to an emergency room official at the Afghan military hospital in Kabul where some casualties were brought, four Afghans were wounded during the rock-throwing protest after the crash, including two policemen.
Story here.