Afghan police fire at protestors

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Helmeted police formed a cordon around Kabul University on Tuesday after deadly protests, guarding angry students as they returned to their darkened dorms.\nStudent protests over a food shortage erupted in violence Monday when police fired on the unruly crowd. As many as four students were killed and dozens injured in the melee, which ended Tuesday when student representatives met with government officials.\nIt was the first time since U.S. and British bombing ousted the Taliban one year ago that a university protest turned violent. The uprising reflected a general frustration in Kabul over poverty that residents and the government had hoped the international community would ease.\n"It's quiet now. The demonstration is over," said police commander Aziz Ahmed, standing with other police outside the locked gate to the dormitories.\nNearby was the charred hulk of a car students had set on fire. The multistoried dormitory was dark from no electricity.\nIn a message on state-run television, Afghan President Hamid Karzai offered his sympathies to the families of the slain students, but he urged the others "to remember that a university is a place of education and not violence."\nHis Higher Education Minister, Mohammed Sharif Faiz, threatened to close the dormitories if violence erupted again.\nThe trouble began Monday, when food ran out while 400 students waited in line after fasting in observance of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, said Sher Mohammed, an army officer who witnessed the first demonstration.\nIn fury, more than 1,000 students marched toward the presidential palace to complain to the United Nations-backed administration.\nMohammed said the students were armed only with stones, bricks and sticks, but Aziz said there were some among the protesters who had guns.\nMohammad also said he saw four slain students, while the government put the death toll at one, with about 30 students reported injured.\nAziz also said some of the students were Taliban, the hardline militia defeated one year ago by U.S. and British bombing. Students and officials dismissed that suggestion.\n"Everyone who protests is said to be Taliban or al Qaeda. It doesn't matter if you are starving and you protest. 'You are Taliban,' they say," said a social science student who gave only the name Umaid.\nThe protest came just ahead of the anniversary Thursday of the fall of the Taliban in Kabul _ and amid complaints that the cash-strapped government has not done enough to improve people's lives.\nWhen students resumed their protest at the university Tuesday, firefighters pushed them back with water cannon and police fired automatic weapons.\nPolice said they fired over students heads. Kabul's police department has received international training, mostly from German police.\nStudents threw rocks, bricks and sticks at the security forces.\n"Death to the killers of our colleagues. We want justice," protesters shouted outside the dilapidated dormitories where more than 3,000 students from villages throughout Afghanistan live in squalor.\n"We have no water. We have no bread. We have no electricity. Everything is expensive," said Nangalai, a medical student. He said some of the students were firing guns in the air during the Monday protest.\nHundreds of onlookers gathered to watch the demonstration Tuesday. Some stood atop the ruins of destroyed homes near the university, which lies in an area of Kabul heavily damaged during factional fighting in the early 1990s.\nThe university, once the country's flagship of higher education, was not repaired during the rule of the Taliban, who frowned on most education other than religious training.