KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, 3 June 2005 — Afghan police drew a security cordon around the southern city of Kandahar yesterday as the death toll from the previous day’s suicide bombing at a mosque rose to 21.

A heavy police presence surrounded the bomb-blackened Abdul Rab Akhundzada Mosque, where staff were clearing debris and shattered glass and residents combed through bloodied clothes, searching for clues about missing relatives.

The bomb blast struck the mosque Wednesday as mourners gathered for the funeral of cleric Maulvi Abdullah Fayyaz, who was gunned down Sunday after speaking out against the former Taleban regime.

“The death toll has risen to 21,” Abdul Razaq, registrar at the city’s main Mirwais hospital, said. At least 52 people were wounded.

“Very strong security precautions were taken,” Kandahar intelligence director Sanam Gul Khan said, with uniformed and plainclothes police patrolling the main access roads and city centre but making no arrests.

Among those killed in Wednesday’s blast were Kabul police chief Gen. Akram Khakreezwal and his bodyguards. Relatives were taking his body back to his nearby home district of Khakrez, said Kandahar Radio and TV director Mohammed Daud.

The attack in the birthplace of the Taleban regime was the worst in Afghanistan this year and one of the most serious since the fall of the Taleban, which gave shelter and support to Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the first suicide attack on an Afghan mosque as “an act of non-Muslim and defeated terrorists”. The provincial governor, Gul Agha Shirzai, blamed the attack on an Arab Al-Qaeda operative.

Kandahar’s streets were quiet yesterday and many residents said they were shaken by the attack. “Carrying out a bomb blast in a mosque and martyring innocents is against all Islamic values,” said Maulvi Ahmad Shah, 29-year-old preacher at the mosque, who sustained slight injuries to his head and hand in the blast.

Faizullah, 45, who owns an electronics repair shop, said: “People are worried for their safety again. People now think that enemies can attack and achieve their goals wherever they want, even inside a mosque.

“We ask coalition and other friends of Afghanistan to help the Afghan government in sealing our border. Our police are not skilled. They are illiterate.”

Mirza Mohammed, 50 who witnessed the blast, said: “I saw death, explosion, blood and human limbs — an attack on innocents in a mosque. It is un-Islamic. We Afghans have been through lots of difficult times, but we are worried that such incidents will slow or stop the reconstruction efforts and Afghanistan’s progress.” The United States leads a coalition force of more than 18,000 soldiers battling insurgents in southern and eastern Afghanistan three-and-a-half years after the fall of the Taleban.

Meanwhile, the United Nations suspended the clearing of land mines in southern Afghanistan yesterday, a day after two Afghan deminers were killed and five wounded by a roadside bomb.

The blast in the southern Helmand province was the third attack on deminers in two weeks. Five of them have been killed. “We condemn these targeted attacks against deminers and call on the Afghan authorities to bring to justice the perpetrators,” said Dan Kelly, of the U.N. Mine Action Centre for Afghanistan. Afghanistan is strewn with land mines, a legacy of decades of conflict that began with an invasion by troops of the former Soviet Union in 1979.