Foreign troops kill eight civilians after Afghan blast: police

File under: What the fuck!? I was really trying to avoid posting about this, but I can't.

Coalition troops killed eight civilians when they opened fire on a crowd after a suicide car bomb struck a military vehicle in eastern Afghanistan Sunday, provincial police said.

Elsewhere, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) reported that two of its soldiers were killed Saturday in combat in the south of the country, which sees the most violence linked to a Taliban insurgency.

A large group of demonstrators gathered to protest the shooting of civilians after the bombing, in the eastern province of Nangarhar, witnesses said.

"Eight people have been killed and more than eight were injured. They were killed in coalition firing after the explosion," Nangarhar police spokesman Ghafoor Khan said.

The US-led coalition force, which operates alongside ISAF, confirmed a patrol had been struck by a suicide car bomb on the road between the provincial capital Jalalabad and the town of Torkham on the border with Pakistan.

A coalition spokesman did not have any information about casualties and would not say which troops were involved. US soldiers are deployed in the east of Afghanistan with ISAF and the smaller coalition. [emphasis mine]

"Fired on a crowd"? No, I'm not blaming the US military. They may have been involved, but no one knows right now from what I can find.

I don't actually blame the forces from any other country either. I'm sure every soldier in Afghanistan is as on edge as any other. Stretch out tours, send soldiers over and over to serve there and then throw in unbelievable heat and vicious fighters and these things are inevitable.

Tell me again, Cheney, how "winning" is preordained.

"Fired on a crowd"

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