US military officials moved to defuse tension after a riot outside their main base by handing six villagers accused of being rebel bomb makers over to local Afghan authorities, officials said yesterday.
The riot -- unusual in an area that has been largely peaceful and pro-American -- was sparked on Tuesday after US forces detained the suspected insurgents in raids on their homes. Demonstrators said they were angry that US troops arrested the villagers without consulting local authorities.
In a statement on Tuesday, the US military said eight people had been detained, although local authorities said only six had been arrested.
More than 1,000 protesters chanting "Die America!" and throwing stones tried to batter down a gate at the Bagram base, where thousands of US and other foreign soldiers live behind razor-wire fences and land mines left from Afghanistan's civil war.
US troops fired in the air, as did Afghan soldiers who also used batons to beat back the protesters.
There did not appear to be any serious casualties, though an Associated Press reporter was hit and kicked by protesters who accused him of being a spy for the US. Other demonstrators punched an AP photographer.
A US military spokeswoman in Kabul said she had no information about the six being released.
Local police chief Abdulrahman Mawlana said their release had been secured after the provincial governor gave a guarantee to the US military to present the men for questioning at any time. The chief said the six were transferred to police late on Tuesday and spent the night in custody.
However, regional tribal leader Latifullah Rahimi said the men had been allowed to spend the night in their homes and had returned to the police station in the morning.
"The power of the people of Bagram won their release," he said in a telephone interview.
Mawlana said one of the six, who goes by the single name Hamidullah, was a former commander in the US-backed Northern Alliance, which helped oust the Taliban in 2001. Prior to that, in the 1980s war against Soviet troops, he had been a senior militia leader for Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a renegade former premier now wanted by the US.
Another one of the six is an Islamic cleric, while the four others are farmers and laborers, Mawlana said.
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