KABUL, 8 June 2003 — A suicide attack against a bus carrying international peacekeepers yesterday brought bloodshed and fear to the Afghan capital Kabul and blew apart claims that the city has become an island of relative safety.
A suspected suicide car bomber blew up the bus carrying German peacekeepers killing six people, including four soldiers and wounding 29, seven of them seriously, officials said.
The troops were on their way to the airport to fly back to Germany after completing their Afghan assignments.
The attack, hours before President Hamid Karzai returned to Kabul from a foreign trip, was condemned by German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder as a “cowardly and devious” act aimed at undermining the fragile peace in the war-torn country.
Karzai described the worst strike against the 5,000-strong International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) since its deployment in Kabul 18 months ago as a “terrorist attack.”
Witnesses at the scene of the blast said they saw the mangled wreckage of the car carrying the explosives and bloodstains and shards of glass on the road.
The charred shell of the bus stood on the side of the road where the force of the explosion left it. It was later removed by cranes.
“It was a deliberate attack from a passing car,” said ISAF spokesman Lt. Col. Paul Kolken.
German Defense Minister Peter Struck said in Berlin the death toll of German troops was four, one more than originally reported by ISAF officers in Kabul. ISAF is led by Germany and the Netherlands.
Struck’s injury count of 29 did not include Afghan passersby, also believed to have been wounded and possibly killed.
The incident was the latest in a string of attacks in Afghanistan aimed at US-led coalition forces, international peacekeepers and aid agencies.
At least 18 peacekeepers have died in Afghanistan, mostly in non-hostile acts.
An Afghan police official, who put the death toll from the blast at five, said it was too early to say who was behind it.
But in other cases in recent months the authorities have blamed remnants of the ousted Taleban regime and the Al-Qaeda network.
Saturday’s explosion was the second violent incident involving German peacekeepers in Kabul in the past two weeks.
A German soldier was killed on May 29 and another wounded when their vehicle hit a land mine near Kabul. Officials blamed the incident on an old mine rather than an act of sabotage.
ISAF has been based in Kabul since Karzai’s government took over in late 2001 after US-led forces toppled the Taleban.
— Additional input from agencies
