Taliban fires on protestors in Jalalabad

Dozens of people had gathered in the city of Jalalabad to raise the national flag, a day before Afghanistan's Independence Day.

The Taliban violently broke up a protest in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing at least one person, as they quashed a rare public show of dissent. The militant group meanwhile met with Afghan officials from the Western-backed government it toppled. Dozens of people had gathered in the city of Jalalabad to raise the national flag, a day before Afghanistan's Independence Day, which commemorates the end of British rule in 1919. They lowered the Taliban flag — a white banner with an Islamic inscription — that the militants had raised in the areas they captured. Video footage later showed the Taliban firing into the air and attacking people with batons to disperse the crowd. Babrak Amirzada, a reporter for a local news agency, said he and a TV cameraman from another agency were beaten by the Taliban as they tried to cover the unrest.