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Afghan police shoot protesters condemning murder of Hazaras

AFGHAN police opened fire on thousands of protesters demonstrating outside the presidential palace yesterday.

Several injuries were reported but no deaths. Authorities said that officers had started shooting to prevent people climbing into the palace during the protest in the capital Kabul.

Mourners bore aloft the coffins of seven ethnic Hazara people who had been discovered at the weekend with their heads almost severed after being kidnapped.

The crowds chanted: “Down with the government,” “Death to the Taliban” and “Death to Pakistan.”

Pakistan is accused of providing a safe haven for Taliban fighters. Yesterday it reiterated its desire to host renewed peace talks between the government and the Islamist organisation, talks which have ceased indefinitely as Kabul-Islamabad relations are frozen.

The coffins of the four men, two women and a nine-year-old girl who had been murdered were draped in green, signifying that they were Shi’ites.

The government says the bodies were found in Zabul, an area where rival Taliban forces have clashed recently, but the Taliban blames the killings on Islamic State (Isis), which is newly present in the country.

Protesters declared that they wanted Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Officer Abdullah Abdullah to resign — and insisted that they would stay in the palace square until they get their way.

“We came to raise our voices for justice and to condemn all acts of murder,” said protest organiser Sakhi Rizayee.

Local council leader Habibullah said the demonstrations showed the unity of the Afghan people regardless of ethnicity.

“No-one can tolerate the situation we have in this country anymore,” he said, adding that the war had become more savage even than the country’s civil war of the 1980s and 1990s, when, despite widespread violence, “no-one was ever beheaded.”

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