Afghans hold a banner which reads” We want to form our Islamic government to stop the wilful operations of the foreign forces in Afghanistan” during a demonstration in Mazar-i- Sharif, Balkh province, north of Kabul, Afghanistan on Saturday, July 10, 2010

In northern Afghanistan, over 1,000 people have joined a protest to demand foreign troops get out of the country.

The rally in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif was sparked by a NATO raid on a market in which two local security guards were killed.

The demonstrators insist the two posed no threat, but the alliance says they were shot after refusing to put down their weapons.

The raid has added to the growing anger over the number of civilian deaths in the country.

On Friday, NATO accepted blame for accidentally killing six civilians in eastern Afghanistan.

Lizette Potgieter, a journalist in Kabul, gave RT her view on why the number of casualties keeps rising.

“I think one of the main reasons is because the allied forces are not collaborating with the Afghan government,” she argued.

“You also have the issue of the Afghan national army and the Afghan national police that have not been fully and properly trained by the foreign military forces,” Potgieter said. “And on the other hand, you have issues in the trouble areas with foreign troops who do not gather the correct information – they gather their own information, and it’s the wrong intelligence. They should actually work with the Afghan national government, get the correct information, and then launch operations.”