WASHINGTON/KABUL, (Reuters) – President Barack Obama sought yesterday to dispel Afghan anger over a U.S. soldier’s massacre of 16 villagers even as protests erupted in Afghanistan over the incident and Taliban insurgents threatened to retaliate by beheading American troops.
The first protests over Sunday’s massacre flared in the eastern city of Jalalabad, where around 2,000 demonstrators chanted “Death to America” and demanded Afghan President Hamid Karzai reject a planned strategic pact that would allow U.S. advisers and possibly special forces to remain in Afghanistan beyond 2014.
Suspected insurgents opened fire on senior Afghan investigators looking into Sunday’s killing spree in Kandahar’s Panjwai district. They shot at long range at two of Karzai’s brothers, Shah Wali Karzai and Abdul Qayum Karzai, and security officials who had gone to the site of the massacre.
Karzai’s brothers were unharmed in a brief battle that began during meetings with local people at a mosque near Najiban and Alekozai villages, but a soldier was killed and a civilian wounded. The area is a Taliban stronghold and a supply route.
In Washington, Obama told reporters: “The United States takes this as seriously as if it was our own citizens and our own children who were murdered.” Obama administration officials also sought to dispel fears that U.S. war strategy was flawed.
Recent setbacks in Afghanistan have spawned calls to accelerate a 2014 goal for the exit of most foreign combat troops from Afghanistan.
British Prime Minister David Cameron said it is important to leave Afghanistan with the ability to provide its own security, but people also need to know the end is in view.
