Taliban fire at protesters carrying Afghanistan flag in Jalalabad, kill two
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Taliban fighters patrol in Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood in the city of Kabul, Afghanistan, Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2021.
The Taliban opened fire at protesters who were carrying the Afghanistan flag during a demonstration in Jalalabad and killed two, according to local media reports.
In a rare, early show of dissent against Taliban rule, dozens of people gathered in the eastern Afghanistan city of Jalalabad and raised the Afghan national flag in an anti-Taliban demonstration Wednesday, videos posted on social media purported to show.
The protesters waved the tricolor Afghan flag embraced by its civilian government following the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that toppled the Taliban.
They replaced the Taliban flag, which is white and bears in black calligraphy the Shahada, or Islamic profession of faith. Video of the event later showed Taliban fighters firing into the air and hitting some of those gathered with sticks.
The Taliban have raised their own flag – a white banner with Islamic inscriptions – in the territories they have seized.
The flag march, apparently at the spur of the moment in Jalalabad, came the day before Afghanistan’s Independence Day on Thursday. That commemoration, marking the end of British rule over Afghanistan in 1919, sees cities across the country festooned in flags.
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