Suicide bomb attack in Afghan capital kills 40
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A suicide car bomb ripped through the front wall of the Indian Embassy in central Kabul on Monday, killing some 40 people in what appeared to be the deadliest attack in Afghanistan's capital since the fall of the Taliban, officials said.
The massive explosion damaged two embassy vehicles entering the compound near where dozens of Afghan men line up every morning to apply for visas.
The embassy in the last several days beefed up security by installing large, dirt-filled blast walls often used by military forces. But the power of the explosion, which reverberated throughout Kabul, still crumbled a front wall, and several shops across the street were destroyed. Smoldering ruins and wounded Afghans covered the street.
"Several shopkeepers have died. I have seen shopkeepers under the rubble," said Ghulam Dastagir, a shopkeeper wounded in the blast.
Najib Nikzad, an Interior Ministry spokesman, said the blast killed 40 people. Earlier, Abdullah Fahim, the spokesman for the Ministry of Public Health, said the explosion killed at least 28 people and wounded 141. The Interior Ministry said six police officers were killed, as were three embassy guards.
In Delhi, Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said four Indians, including India's military attache, were killed in the attack.
The explosion, on a busy, tree-lined street near Afghanistan's Interior Ministry, appeared to be the deadliest attack in Kabul since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. It was the deadliest in Afghanistan since a suicide bomber killed more than 100 people at a dog-fighting competition in Kandahar province in February.
President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack and said it was carried out by militants trying to rupture the friendship between Afghanistan and India.
The Interior Ministry, meanwhile, hinted that the attack was carried out with help from Pakistan's intelligence service, saying that "terrorists have carried out this attack in coordination and consultation with some of the active intelligence circles in the region."
In Delhi, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs said the attack would not deter the mission from "fulfilling our commitments to the government and people of Afghanistan." The Foreign Minister of Pakistan, Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi, said Pakistan condemned the attack and terrorism in all forms.
Shortly after the blast a woman ran out of a Kabul hospital screaming, crying and hitting her face with both of her hands. Her two children, a girl named Lima and a boy named Mirwais, had been killed.
"Oh my God!" the woman screamed. "They are both dead."
Afghanistan's Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta visited the embassy shortly after the attack, ministry spokesman Sultan Ahmed Baheen said.
"India and Afghanistan have a deep relationship between each other. Such attacks of the enemy will not harm our relations," Spanta told the embassy staff, according to Baheen.
Militants have frequently attacked Indian offices and projects around Afghanistan since launching an insurgency after the ouster of the Taliban at the end of the 2001. Many Taliban militants have roots in Pakistan, which has long had a troubled relationship with India.
When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan in the late 1990s, the Islamic militia was supported by Pakistan, India's archrival. Pakistan today remains wary of strengthening ties between Afghanistan and India.
The U.N.'s envoy to Afghanistan said that "in no culture, no country, and no religion is there any excuse or justification for such acts."
"The total disregard for innocent lives is staggering, and those behind this must be held responsible," Kai Eide said.
The U.N. sent an e-mail to its staff advising them to stay off Kabul's roads because of reports that a second suicide car bomber was in the city.
The embassy attack was the sixth suicide bombing in Kabul this year. Insurgent violence has killed more than 2,200 people — mostly militants — in Afghanistan in 2008, according to an Associated Press count of official figures.
While Afghanistan has seen increasing violence in recent months, Kabul has been largely spared the random bomb attacks that Taliban militants use in their fight against Afghan and international troops.
In September 2006, a suicide bomber near the gates of the Interior Ministry killed 12 people and wounded 42 others. After that blast, additional guards and barriers were posted on the street.
In two separate bombings Monday against police convoys in the country's south, seven officers were killed and 10 others were wounded, officials said.
In Uruzgan province, a roadside bomb killed four police on patrol and wounded seven others, said provincial police chief Juma Gul Himat.
In the Zhari district of Kandahar, another roadside blast killed three officers and wounded three others, said district chief Niyaz Mohammad Sarhadi.
NATO's International Security Assistance Force, meanwhile, said one of its soldiers died Sunday in an attack in the south.
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