On Wednesday, an explosion tore through a group of children gathered around foreign soldiers visiting a U.S.-funded road project in Nangarhar province, east of the capital of Kabul. Afghan officials said four children were killed. NATO said two died.
Minutes after the blast, local residents were accusing American forces of throwing a grenade into the crowd -- even though several international troops were among the wounded. The Afghan Interior Ministry later released a statement saying the explosion occurred when a passing police vehicle hit a mine.
Still, an estimated 5,000 protesters demonstrated the deaths Thursday along a road between Kabul and Jalalabad in Nangarhar. They waved a banner condemning the attack, set fire to an effigy of President Barack Obama and chanted "Long live Islam!" and "Death to Obama!"
"We are shouting 'Death to America' and 'to the Afghan government,'" Sardar Wali, a university student at the demonstration. "It is the responsibility of the Afghan government to find and hand over the people who are responsible for this attack."
The Afghan Taliban had a statement of its own Thursday that asked who killed "school students, the adolescents in Narang district of Kunar province, nearly one week ago?"
The insurgents were referring to an incident late last month when the Afghan government and foreign military officials sparred over reports that 10 civilians died during a military operation in a remote area of Kunar in eastern Afghanistan.
Karzai expressed anger over the deaths, saying the victims included eight young students. He appointed a team to visit the province to investigate the deaths, which prompted hundreds of Afghans to protest and chant "death" to America.
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