KABUL, Nov 12: Police opened fire on Tuesday on several thousand students protesting in the Afghan capital against authorities’ handling of the previous night’s riot in which at least one student was killed.

Student representatives said the two days of riots had left at least six dead.

Mohammad Shafiq, a 23-year-old medical student, said four people were killed on Monday and a further two on Tuesday.

The protests marked the first major demonstration in the city since the demise of the Taliban exactly one year ago.

Crowds shouting “death to the student killers” charged riot police armed with batons and water cannon. The students retaliated with stones, prompting police to open fire initially in the air and then into the crowds.

Din Mohammad Jurat, the interior ministry’s director of public order, told reporters at the Kabul university campus that shots had not been aimed at the students.

“The students are our brothers. We tried to calm down the situation. There were just a small number of problem-creating elements.

“We haven’t fired at the students today. We just fired in the air to control the situation.”

Police were also seen beating several students with batons. At least three were carried away with severe head injuries.

The students had taken to the streets in protest at police handling of a demonstration on Monday against a lack of power, water and food at the university’s dormitories.

Interior Minister Taj Mohammad Wardak said at least one student died in the Monday protest when police and soldiers were called in to break up a rock-throwing crowd.

Officials said another seven were injured, including two military personnel.

A spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which patrols Kabul, confirmed one person died in Monday’s uprising.

“Sadly several people were injured and it appears at least one person was killed,” Major Gordon Mackenzie said.

“By coincidence there were some ISAF troops nearby when the protest began, but while they carefully followed events, they did not get directly involved.”

One student said the demonstrators were only asking why conditions could not be improved.

“We asked them a logical question: why they did not improve conditions? They answered us with bullets,” he said.

Wardak said an investigation had been ordered into the Monday night riot and the conditions in which the students were living.

“Their big mistake was to stage their protest at night. This has never happened before in the history of Kabul. They threw rocks at everything, every car in the area,” he said.

Afghanistan’s education ministry earlier ordered that medical students would shortly have to sit end-of-year exams, despite appeals to delay the tests because of recent bad weather.

Some 3,000 students, mostly from the country’s poor outlying provinces, have protested that without electricity they are unable to study at night or keep warm in the large, poorly insulated university dormitories.

Students also complained that they are unable to heat the little food they have for Sehri or Iftar because of the power problem.

Kabul has been hit by a series of student protests since last year’s fall of the Taliban, under which education was severely restricted, forcing many Afghans to pursue their studies abroad.

Afzal Aman, deputy chief of Kabul’s garrison, alleged the latest uprising may have been inflamed by guerillas belonging to the Taliban or the Al Qaeda network.

“Inshallah there is not any political reason for this demonstration. Of course, during the Taliban time there were lots of people studying here who were trained to fight by the Al Qaeda.

“Maybe there are a number here who will use the situation to their benefit.”—AFP