KABUL: At least four Afghans were killed 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.
"Our brothers and sisters were martyred in the bloody attack on Wednesday, and our leaders are doing nothing to stop this carnage," Rahila Jafari, a civil society activist, said during the protest.
"We want justice, we want the perpetrators of the attack to be hanged to death."
Other enraged protesters, carrying banners with gruesome images from the bombing, burned effigies of the president and threatened to set up protest tents around his palace.
"It is absolutely shameful that government forces used live rounds and tear gas against grieving protesters who are demanding justice for victims of the bombing," Afghan MP Fawzia Koofi told AFP.