On a boulevard lined with riot police, a motorcade of several hundred protesters honked noisily, waved banners and held up photographs of seven people killed in clashes during demonstrations after a massive bombing in the Afghan capital a month ago.

At a somber ceremony in the garden of a NATO compound, senior U.S. and European officials addressed the burqa-covered widows and fidgeting children of seven Afghan police officers who died in the May 31 bombing. They also saluted 10 wounded officers as national heroes.

In different ways, the clamorous rally Monday morning and the hushed ceremony Sunday evening were both attempts to find meaning and dignity in the deaths of Afghan civilians and security forces resulting from the horrific blast in a high-security area of Kabul. The truck bomb killed more than 150 people and wounded about 600.

[Anger and sorrow grip Kabul after devastating bombing in diplomatic zone ]

The protesters were seeking justice for their fallen friends as part of a movement — called the Uprising for Change — that emerged after the bombing. Following the blast, thousands joined emotional anti-government demonstrations , and some later erected protest camps that blocked roads across the city for much of June.

One leader of the Monday caravan, university lecturer Shiwae Sharq, said he had been among the demonstrators marching June 2 toward the presidential palace. With him were Mohammad Salim Ezadyar, the son of a deputy speaker of parliament, and a journalism graduate student named Waisuddin. Suddenly, Sharq recalled, a barrage of shots rang out.

“We were walking together and shouting slogans for change and justice,” he said Monday. “I heard shots and saw people falling. Wais was down with four bullets in him, and he died instantly. Salim had been shot in the face. We rushed him to the hospital in our arms, but he died there.”

[At least 15 killed as multiple blasts target funeral for protester in Kabul]

Monday’s rally ended without incident near the palace. President Ashraf Ghani was away on a visit to Turkmenistan, but the demonstrators called on him to remove his top security officials and prosecute the officers who had fired into the crowd during the June 2 protest.

“We didn’t want to disrupt the public, but we wanted our message to be heard,” Sharq said. “If the government doesn’t listen, we will keep coming back.”

While Monday’s demonstration sought to sustain the focus on the government’s inability to protect the public, Sunday’s ceremony was an effort to bring solace and closure to victims belonging to the Afghan security forces, whose members are the most vulnerable to insurgent violence.

The event was also an attempt to reassure doubtful Afghans that the international community is committed to them at a moment of crisis and to calm resentment that hundreds of Afghans perished or were maimed in a bombing aimed at the city’s diplomatic and foreign-military district.

[In Kabul, a massive bombing took its toll on me and a city I love]

Officials greeted the wounded officers with handshakes and hugs. Some spoke to the police widows through their veils and comforted their small children.

Then Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., commander of U.S. military forces in Afghanistan, stood in his dress blues and spoke to the rows of Afghan victims and family members.

“You are all the families of our martyrs and heroes,” Nicholson said. “They are the true mujahideen of Afghanistan. You are the true mujahideen of Afghanistan. It is our duty to remember them, honor them and complete the work for which they died or were wounded.”

He then read out the names of all 17 officers who died or were injured in the bombing.

German Ambassador Walter Hassman, speaking in a tone of contrition, acknowledged that the police officers had died in part “to protect the diplomats in the Green Zone, the international supporters here.” Germany, he promised, “will stand by your side. We will come back.”

According to officials, the driver of the tanker truck that contained the bomb had tried to get through a checkpoint into the Green Zone. The police officers who died were among those who had halted and questioned the driver, who then threw his truck into reverse and blew it up.

The German Embassy was the building nearest to the blast site. It was left in ruins and has been evacuated, but no foreigners were among those killed. The Afghan officers who survived with injuries were among those charged with patrolling the diplomatic area.

Two of those men, both with severe facial injuries, sat silently through the ceremony. One kept wiping one of his eye sockets; the other had a jagged scar from forehead to chin. The older man, a sergeant named Rahmatullah, had been making his morning rounds of embassy guard posts when the bomb exploded just yards away.

“When I got up, there was blood coming from my head and bodies all around me,” he said through an interpreter. “They took my eye,” he added.

Despite his injury, the 16-year police veteran summoned his diplomatic skills for the occasion. “This is war, and we are both fighting the same enemy,” Rahmatullah said. “We have the same goals, and we make the same sacrifices. We have to stay united and keep fighting.”

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