Riots, Looting In Kabul

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.

The unrest started after three U.S. 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.

At least three people were killed and 16 injured in the crash, while U.S. forces killed one person and wounded two when they fired on dozens of stone-throwing rioters shouting "Death to America!" said Sher Shah Usafi, a Kabul police chief.

A commander for the city's traffic police who was at the scene of the accident said he also saw U.S. forces firing on protesters. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

A U.S. military spokesman, Lt. Col. Paul Fitzpatrick, confirmed U.S. troops were involved in the accident but said: "From the information I have right now, we have no indication that U.S. forces fired any shots, but we will continue to investigate."

Associated Press Television footage showed hundreds of angry young men hurling rocks at what appeared to be three U.S. military trucks and three dun-colored Humvees as they sped from the area after the crash, their windscreens cracked by the stones.

A center-mounted machine gun on one of the Humvees was seen firing into the air over the crowd as the vehicle sped away.

The video footage also showed an Afghan man apparently hurt in the riot lying on the ground, being comforted by others around him.

An AP reporter at the scene of the accident said he saw about 10 Afghan police firing into a crowd of about 50 demonstrators; U.S. troops had already left the area. Three of the protesters appeared to be hit by bullets and had blood smeared on their clothes. Others scattered when the firing erupted, but later regrouped.

Two helicopters belonging to a NATO-led peacekeeping force hovered over the area.

Phones in Kabul were only working sporadically. Repeated attempts to get through to the city's hospitals to get the latest casualty toll from the unrest were unsuccessful.