KABUL — Irate demonstrators burned tires and blocked traffic in eastern Afghanistan on Thursday after U.S.-led forces killed an armed relative of an Afghan lawmaker during a night raid on her home, according to military and Afghan officials.
The confrontation was another setback for the American-led military coalition in Afghanistan, which has declared an aim of reducing civilian deaths and winning support from skeptical Afghans as it prepares for a prolonged summer offensive meant to hobble the Taliban.
U.S. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the head of coalition forces in Afghanistan, had issued a series of orders meant to curtail civilian deaths, which alienate the public and provide fodder for insurgents. The American military said Afghan soldiers took part in Wednesday night’s deadly search.
“I didn’t see any Afghan forces,” said Shah Fasial Sidiqi, the younger brother of Afghan lawmaker Safiya Sidiqi and one of those whom U.S. forces held for several hours during the raid.
Demonstrators took to the streets in Nangarhar province Thursday as Safiya Sidiqi denounced the U.S. for the raid that killed a relatives.
“I was afraid of Taliban, and now I can say the Americans are the enemy of the women of Afghanistan,” she told McClatchy Newspapers.
Sidiqi wasn’t home when the raid began at her village in Nangarhar province, east of Kabul. However, her younger brother was there when the Americans came looking for a Taliban leader. He said that more than 80 U.S. soldiers took over the family compound before midnight.
The Americans tied up 15 men, women and children and blindfolded the Sidiqi relatives, the brother said. He said he told the Americans that they were taking over a lawmaker’s home. “They said, ‘We know,’ ” he said.
During the search, Safiya Sidiqi said, one of her brothers-in-law emerged from a neighboring house with an old hunting rifle and was shot.
In a statement, U.S. forces said that the man was killed after he took aim at American and Afghan troops who were taking part in the raid.
