Thousands of people have rallied outside the Afghan presidential palace in Kabul in protest at the killing by militants of seven ethnic Hazaras.
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Most of Wednesday’s protests were peaceful, but a few demonstrators tried to scale the walls of a building near the president’s palace, forcing police to fire warning shots, Reuters reported.
Their numbers reduced to handfuls in the wake of caution shots were fired noticeable all around Wednesday evening, however numerous individuals stayed in the avenues further from the royal residence, as indicated by an AFP picture taker.
“These senseless murders may amount to war crimes and the perpetrators must be held accountable”, Nicholas Haysom, the U.N.’s Special Representative for Afghanistan, said in a statement Wednesday.
The seven civilians, including two women and a child were killed in Zabul, one of the most hostile provinces in Afghanistan with several districts fully controlled by Taliban.
Afghanistan’s intelligence agency on Tuesday rejected the suggestion that I.S. affiliates were responsible, saying that the southern province has been the scene of deadly clashes between rival Taliban factions for days. Provincial officials suspect militants linked to the Islamic State were behind the killings.
Afghanistan’s Hazaras, who are predominantly Shiite, have been attacked in the past and this year, many of them have been the victims in a number of large-scale abductions.
“They accused President Ashraf Ghani of incompetence in the face of deteriorating security and called for the resignation of his coalition government”, reports the NY Times (NYT).
“This sends a very risky message to the people of Afghanistan, its government and its global allies”, said Abdul Rauf Ibrahimi, speaker of the lower house of parliament. Officials say that the bodies found over the weekend – four men, one woman and two girls – were among dozens of Hazaras kidnapped in neighbouring Ghazni province earlier this year.
Thousands march bearing the coffins of ethnic Hazara beheaded by unknowned militants and left in the streets of Kabul.
“Death to the Taliban”, “Down with the Government”, “Death to the Islamic State”, and “Death to Pakistan”, chanted the crowd.
Protester Ahmad Dawar Nadi also urged the leaders to resign, over “how incapable they are of brining peace and security to this country, which is their first and most important job”.
The demonstrators included members of all Afghanistan’s ethnic groups, according to activist Zahra Sepehr, who said the turnout was about 10,000.
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Ghani has struggled to root out corruption, consolidate power, and tamp down the violent insurgency since he came to power a year ago after a disputed election. Pointing to her daughter, who had also joined the demonstration, Rezai said, “This could have been her. It could have been any of us”.
