KABUL, 8 May 2005 — A bomb exploded at an Internet cafe in the Afghan capital, Kabul, yesterday killing two Afghans and wounding five, police said. The cafe is at the front of a guesthouse used by Westerners in the heart of the city. “Two people have been killed and five wounded by the bomb blast,” Kabul police chief Akram Khakrizwal told reporters.
Speaking to reporters in front of the damaged cafe, he later described the blast as an act of terrorism. Police were trying to determine if the explosive had been carried by a suicide attacker or placed in the cafe, he said.
Kabul has seen occasional bomb blasts, including suicide attacks against NATO-led peacekeepers, since US-led forces overthrew the Taleban government in late 2001. The deadliest attack was in September 2002 when more than 20 people were killed and scores wounded by a car bomb on a busy city street. Four German soldiers were killed and 31 wounded in June 2003 by a suicide bomber. The most recent blast was two weeks ago but it caused no casualties.
Meanwhile, President Hamid Karzai yesterday opened a new building for a local authority in southern Afghanistan, the first erected under a reconstruction program he said would extend the rule of law in the provinces. The Afghanistan Stabilization Program launched in 2003 aims to rebuild some 365 local government facilities and police headquarters throughout the country.
The district building for the Logar capital Mohammad Agha, 40 kilometers south of Kabul, was the first to be completed under the project. “The building is here to extend the rule of law,” Karzai told a gathering of tribal chiefs and government officials during the opening ceremony. “This building is to help people through,” he said, encouraging government officials to help the war-weary population with their problems.
Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali, who accompanied Karzai amid tight security provided by US bodyguards and warplanes, said the project would be completed in 2007. However, Jalali said his ministry, which leads the $190-million program, faced a shortage of funds supposed to be provided by international donors. “Only four percent of the pledged money has so far been provided for ... the stabilization program which is quite a lot less compared to other national projects,” Jalali said.
The program also aims to connect Afghanistan’s districts with the capital Kabul and the rest of the world by telephone, he said. Karzai, who won Afghanistan’s first presidential election last October, has been trying to extend the authority of his government beyond Kabul. Nearly three-and-half years after the Taleban regime was toppled by a US-led invasion, much of the country remains under the sway of local commanders and regional warlords.
