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Three people were killed in the accident, and a fourth was killed by gunfire, police and witnesses said. Aljazeera’s correspondent in the capital, Kabul, said at least 20 were killed or wounded. An Aljazeera cameraman was injured in the riot. Hundreds of protesters marched to the palace of US-backed President Hamid Karzai in the city centre, shouting "Death to Karzai! Death to America!" Elsewhere in the city, AP reporters heard a 20-second burst of heavy automatic gunfire, apparently coming from the direction of the US embassy. Staff at the US embassy were moved to a secure location within the heavily fortified embassy, said Chris Harris, an embassy spokesman. He had no immediate information on the reported gunfire. Hundreds of Afghan army troops deployed around Kabul, and two tanks of Nato peacekeepers drove at high speed through the city centre. Rioters smashed police guard boxes and set fire to police cars. Crash The unrest started after three US Humvee vehicles coming into the city from the outskirts before the vehicles ran into a rush-hour traffic jam, hitting several civilian cars, witnesses said. A Kabul police chief, Sher Shah Usafi, said at least three people were killed and 16 wounded in the crash, while US forces killed one person and wounded two when they fired on dozens of stone-throwing rioters shouting "Down with America!" A commander for the city’s traffic police who was at the scene said he saw US forces firing on protesters. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media. The US-led coalition in Kabul confirmed that there had been an accident and gave different casualty figures but said it had no reports of soldiers opening fire. Lieutenant Tamara Lawrence, coalition spokeswoman, told AFP that: "There was a military flatbed truck which had a mechanical failure, maybe a brake problem, and it crashed into some civilian vehicles. "One civilian was killed and six were injured." Another spokesman, Colonel Tom Collins, said: "We have absolutely no reports of coalition forces firing." People in the crowd said they saw at least three US Humvee vehicles hit several civilian cars. Mohammad Wali, 21, a shopkeeper who said he saw several bodies, said that "The American convoy hit all the vehicles which were in their way. They didn’t care about the civilians at all." The United States has 23,000 troops in Afghanistan. A Nato-led peacekeeping force has more than 9,000 troops in the country, most of them stationed in Kabul and the more peaceful north and west, although it is expanding its mission to the volatile south, where a Taliban-inspired insurgency is raging. Aljazeera + Agencies | ||||||||||||||||||
US and Afghan forces fire on rioters