Riots, Looting In Kabul

Sparked By Traffic Accident Involving U.S. Troops

(AP)  Violence broke out anew in and around Afghanistan's two most important cities Monday – Kabul, where crowds rioted, began looting and ransacked the offices of Care International, and in Kandahar - the former headquarters of the Taliban - where a group of Canadian soldiers was ambushed while searching for Taliban holdouts.

A coalition spokesman says five Canadian soldiers were injured and as many as six Taliban militants were killed, during a gunbattle in Kandahar - the city that was headquarters to the Taliban.

In Kabul, a traffic accident involving U.S. troops is blamed for sparking the rioting, and gunfire was later heard near the U.S. Embassy. Authorities say at least five people have been killed, and another 60 injured.

Rioters broke into shops and stole household items, and a reporter for The Associated Press said he saw several demonstrators pull a man from a civilian vehicle and beat him. The man escaped and ran to a line of police, who fired shots over the heads of the demonstrators.

Hundreds of protesters marched to the palace of U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai in the city center, shouting "Death to Karzai! Death to America!"

AP reporters elsewhere in the city heard a 20-second burst of heavy automatic gunfire, apparently coming from the direction of the U.S. Embassy. It subsided but gunfire was then heard sporadically.

Staff at the U.S. 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 center. Rioters smashed police guard boxes and set fire to police cars.

There were unconfirmed reports from protesters that rioters also smashed windows at the five-star Serena Hotel in the city center, popular with foreign visitors.