A women’s rights protest in Afghanistan ended in terror Saturday after Taliban forces fired their guns in the air, the Associated Press reports. Women marched toward the presidential palace to urge the Taliban to grant women rights, something it refused to do during its prior rule in the 1990s. “We are here to gain human rights in Afghanistan,” protester Maryam Naiby, 20, said. “I love my country. I will always be here.”

The Taliban initially responded with relative calmness, hearing the women out and promising to grant them rights. But once the women reached the presidential palace, Taliban special forces ran into the crowd and aimed their guns toward the sky, firing away. It forced the crowd to disperse, but it didn’t halt the resilience of some of the women. “I am the voice of the women who are unable to speak,” Farhat Popalzai, 24, told the outlet. “They think this is a man’s country but it is not, it is a woman’s country too.”