Afghan Boy Killed in NATO Raid

KABUL, Afghanistan — For the second time in three days, a night raid in eastern Afghanistan by NATO forces resulted in the death of a civilian boy, setting off protests on Saturday that turned violent and ended in the death of a second boy.

A NATO spokesman apologized for the boy’s death, which took place early Saturday in western Nangarhar Province in Hesarek District, a remote, poppy-growing area that lies close to Kabul Province and Logar Province. There has been almost no presence of NATO soldiers there throughout the war, and the area is thought to be heavily penetrated by the Taliban.

The district governor, Abdul Khalid, said that he had feared a Taliban attack on the government center and that he had called for help from local Afghan security forces. At the same time, there was a raid, he said. “American forces did an operation and mistakenly killed a fourth-grade student; he had had gone to sleep in his field and had a shotgun next to him,” he said.

“People keep shotguns with them for hunting, not for any other purposes,” he said.

The boy was the son of an Afghan National Army soldier, said Noor Alam, the headmaster of the school the student attended. Although the boy was 15, like many rural Afghans he was in a lower grade because he had not been able to go to school regularly, local people said.

When morning came, an angry crowd gathered in the boy’s village of Narra and more than 200 local residents marched with the body to the district center. Some of the men were armed and confronted the police, shouting anti-American slogans and throwing rocks at the police vehicles and the Hisarek government center, the district governor and the headmaster said.

In an effort to push back the crowd and stop their advance to the district center, the police opened fire. A 14-year-old boy was killed, and at least one other person was wounded, Mr. Khalid said.

“The police had to defend themselves therefore they fired some warning shots,” he said.

On Thursday, a night raid by international forces in Nangarhar Province resulted in the death of a 12-year-old girl and her uncle who was a member of the Afghan National Police.

Elsewhere in eastern Afghanistan, a car bombing was directed at a joint Afghan and coalition patrol on Saturday. The explosion, in Yaqoubi District, wounded eight civilians including six children, said Faisal Mohammed, a doctor in a hospital in the city of Khost.