Qayum and Shah Walid Karzai and other top Afghan officials in their delegation escaped in their cars unharmed yesterday’s ambush in the country’s south.

But one Afghan soldier was killed, while two other Afghan army personnel were wounded in the 20-minute firefight that ensued in one of the two villages in Kandahar province where the killings had occurred two days before.

The gun battle came as images of the aftermath of Sunday’s killings spread across the country, and the public reaction — which at first seemed surprisingly muted — began to build.

In the east, students staged the first significant protest in response to the killings, raising concerns about a repeat of the wave of violent demonstrations that rocked the nation after last month’s burning of Qur’ans by troops at a US base. The incident has also added to pressure in the US to get out of Afghanistan more quickly. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, speaking to reporters on the plane traveling to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, said the military withdrawal was still on schedule to finish by 2014.

Panetta said he was awaiting plans from Gen. John Allen, the top commander in Afghanistan, to bring home the remaining 23,000 US troops sent to Afghanistan during the 2009 surge. Those forces are due to leave by the end of September, dropping the US presence in the country down to 68,000 troops.

Taleban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi claimed responsibility for the attack on the delegation in Balandi village in Panjwai district, an area considered the birthplace of the militant group. Previously, the movement had vowed to behead those responsible for the shootings.

The militants rode to the village on motorcycles, police said. They ambushed the delegation from the cover of a distant row of trees. Afghan security forces fired back, killing three militants, said Gen. Abdul Razaq, the Kandahar police chief. The two Afghan army personnel who were wounded included a soldier and a military prosecutor, he said.

Qayum Karzai sought to play down the ambush. He said the delegation, which also included Kandahar Gov. Tooryalai Wesa and Minister of Border and Tribal Affairs Asadullah Khalid, had been giving their condolences to the victims’ families. They then heard “two very, very light shots.”

“Then we assumed it was the national army that started to fire in the air,” said Karzai.

The US has an Army staff sergeant in custody who is suspected of carrying out Sunday’s pre-dawn killings but has not released his name.

On Tuesday, villagers who testified to the delegation insisted there were two soldiers, citing relatives who survived the attacks.

Mohammad Wazir, who was away from his home in Balandi village that night, said his sister saw two US soldiers enter the house and start shooting. Everyone started running different directions, and she ran to the kitchen to hide. When the gunfire ended and she re-emerged, 11 of her relatives were dead.

In Alkozai to the south, a man named Sayed Jan said his cousins told him that they saw two soldiers come into his house and start firing. Jan’s relatives barricaded their door and snuck out another exit. Jan was away in Kandahar city that night.

The villages are about 65 km (40 miles) southwest of Kandahar city. The villagers’ anger was evident in discussions with the visiting officials before the attack cut the visit short.

“Today, the Kandahar governor was trying to explain to the villagers that he was only one soldier, that he was not a sane person and that he was sick,” said Abdul Rahim Ayubi, a Kandahar lawmaker who was part of the delegation. “But the people were just shouting and they were very angry. They didn’t listen to the governor. They accused him of defending the Americans instead of defending the Kandahari people,” Ayubi said.

The delegation did manage before the shooting started to pay out compensation to family members of the victims — $2,000 for each death and $1,000 for each person wounded.

In the eastern city of Jalalabad, meanwhile, hundreds of students staged the first significant protest in response to the tragedy, shouting angry slogans against the US and the American attacker.

The killings have caused outrage in Afghanistan but have not sparked the kind of violent protests seen last month after American soldiers burned Muslim holy books and other Islamic texts.

But the students protesting at a Jalalabad university, 80 miles (125 kilometers) east of the capital Kabul, were incensed.

“Death to America!” and, “Death to the soldier who killed our civilians!” shouted the crowd.