KABUL: A military investigation into a violent confrontation between Afghan residents of Kabul and US soldiers last week has concluded that the troops acted with “admirable restraint” even after a US soldier was stabbed, a military official said.

The investigation examined the tense moments after a Taliban bomb ripped through a heavily armoured convoy of US troops travelling down a busy street in Afghan capital city. As the US soldiers, who were unharmed, got out of their trucks to form a cordon, they were confronted with a scene of devastation. A mix of passing motorists and shopkeepers had taken the brunt of the blast. At least one Afghan was killed and nearly two dozen were wounded.

What happened next was confusing and violent. Witnesses to the scene, interviewed by reporters, said Afghans began to throw stones at the soldiers and shout “Death to Americans.”

A US soldier opened fire, with some witnesses reporting that the shots were clearly aimed away from the crowd and intended as a warning. But others accused the soldiers of firing into the crowd. At one point, an Afghan man stabbed a soldier. The scene calmed only when Afghan security forces took control, witnesses said.

The investigation by an 11-person board of Nato officials concluded that it was extremely unlikely that US troops had shot any Afghans during the episode, said Brig. Gen. Wilson A. Shoffner of the US Army. Shoffner, the top military spokesman for the US-led mission in Afghanistan, said the review had concluded that one US soldier had “fired two warning shots from his rifle into the side of an unoccupied and obviously damaged civilian vehicle parked on the side of the road in order to warn off the crowd.”

By that time, Shoffner said, the crowd of “agitated civilians” had been throwing rocks, debris and even chunks of metal at the troops. The warning shots prompted the crowd to back up. Shoffner said the investigation found that the shots were fired at a downward angle into the empty vehicle “and there was no reasonable way that the rounds could have caused any injury to anyone.”

The investigation also found that the troops had acted with “admirable restraint” after an Afghan man had stabbed one of them. The soldier’s wound, to his right arm, was not serious, and witnesses said the assailant was arrested by Afghan security forces. One witness, Khesraw, 33, said that after the stabbing, a nearby soldier had simply pushed away the man with the knife. “I was really amazed to see how patiently the US soldier acted,” Khesraw said.

Shoffner said US soldiers fired only two warning shots during the entire episode. But he noted that Afghan security officials on the scene also fired. It was not clear whether those were warning shots or struck members of the crowd. “I believe those were warning shots,” Shoffner said, but added that “from looking at the video, you can tell they were firing shots. But you can’t tell really anything beyond that.”

Shoffner declined to identify the source of the video, but the military uses cameras affixed to dirigibles about a quarter-mile in the sky.

— New York Times News Service

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