Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan — Angry anti-American protests erupted today in a provincial capital close to a string of desert villages where dozens of Afghan civilians were killed this week during clashes between insurgents and U.S.-led troops.
U.S. military officials, meanwhile, expressed growing doubts that the deaths in the Bala Baluk district of western Farah province were the result of airstrikes called in by American special forces. Instead, they said preliminary findings suggested that the villagers sheltering in residential compounds were slain by Taliban fighters wielding grenades. Local officials contested that theory.
The civilian deaths, and the increasingly bitter dispute over the circumstances surrounding them, have come against a backdrop of rising violence in Afghanistan's south. In Helmand province, a suicide bomber on a motorcycle tried to strike a military convoy as it passed through a market district, but killed 12 civilians instead, authorities said.
Most of the 21,000 additional American troops arriving in the next few months are expected to be deployed in the south, the heartland of the insurgency. Defense Secretary William M. Gates is in Afghanistan this week consulting with commanders in advance of the infusion of U.S. forces.
Afghan public support for the Western military presence, however, is being steadily eroded by civilian deaths at the hands of coalition troops, and the latest instance of mass civilian fatalities has triggered a nationwide outcry. More than 100 rock-throwing protesters chanting anti-American slogans gathered outside the governor's office in Farah, capital of the province of the same name. Police fired live ammunition to subdue the crowd, wounding one demonstrator.
Provincial officials, supported by the International Committee of the Red Cross, say dozens of villagers died during bombardment that occurred Monday night after hours of fighting between insurgents and Afghan troops reinforced by U.S. Marines. Some officials, including the provincial police chief, have said the death toll could exceed 100, and that surviving villagers' accounts of bombardment at nightfall, after a day of running battles, were consistent with one another.
But American military officials said it has not been proven that the airstrikes caused the deaths. Col. Gregory Julian, chief spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said today that investigators had found evidence to support the theory that Taliban insurgents threw grenades into the crowded compounds where villagers had sought haven from the fighting.
"We are trying to confirm that close air support didn't result in these civilian casualties," Julian said. "The signature for aerial bombardment would be different than that from a roomful of grenades."
However, a joint probe by the U.S. military and Afghan authorities had not yet yielded final results, he said.
laura.king@latimes.com
Special correspondent M. Karim Faiez contributed to this report.
