KABUL: At least four Afghans were killed on Friday as an anti-government protest spiralled into street clashes, with police firing live rounds to disperse hundreds of stone-throwing demonstrators incensed by a catastrophic bombing.

Public anger has mounted after an explosives-laden sewage tanker detonated in Kabul’s diplomatic quarter on Wednesday, killing 90 people and wounding hundreds of others in the deadliest attack in the Afghan capital since 2001.

Hundreds of demonstrators calling for President Ashraf Ghani to step down and chanting “Death to the Taliban” clashed with police near the bombing site, prompting officials to beat them back with live rounds, mostly in the air, tear gas and water cannon.

Kabul’s Emergency Hospital said four protesters died on arrival while 15 others were wounded, some of them critically. Local media reported the death toll was as high as seven.

Kabul has been on edge since the bombing, which highlighted the ability of militants to strike even in the capital’s most secure district, home to the presidential palace and foreign embassies that are enveloped in a maze of concrete blast walls.

Friday’s killings will likely further inflame passions, as angry protesters marched through the streets carrying bloodied corpses of those killed in the clashes but they were stopped from reaching the presidential palace.

Residents of the city have demanded answers from the government over the perceived intelligence failure leading to the bombing, which underscores spiralling insecurity in Afghanistan.

Amnesty International denounced the government use of force as an “excessive and deadly response”. The United Nations also urged restraint, warning opposition leaders and strongmen from trying to “opportunistically use these emotional and fragile moments” to foment violence for political gains.

Afghanistan’s intelligence agency has blamed the Taliban-allied Haqqani Network for the attack.

Ghani is expected to approve the execution of 11 Taliban and Haqqani prisoners, a government source told AFP, in apparent retaliation for the assault. The Taliban denied they were involved.

The insurgents have threatened “harsh exemplary attacks” in a statement on their website, including the killing of foreign hostages they hold if the government carried out the executions.

Following their threat, the American University of Afghanistan appealed to the Taliban to release two professors, American Kevin King and Australian Timothy Weeks, who were abducted in August last year. The two appeared in a Taliban hostage video in January, the first proof that they were alive.

The Taliban also hold Canadian Joshua Boyle and his American wife Caitlan Coleman, who had two sons in captivity after being kidnapped in Afghanistan in 2012 during a backpacking trip.

Published in Dawn, June 3rd, 2017