BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan, 28 February 2007 — A suicide bomber blew himself up outside the main US military base in Afghanistan as US Vice President Dick Cheney visited yesterday, killing at least 14 people. Cheney was not injured in the incident, which came after bad weather forced him to stay overnight at the Bagram Air Base during a surprise visit for talks on the fight against Al-Qaeda and the Taleban militia.
The Taleban said it carried out the attack, the deadliest in months, and had deliberately targeted the heavily fortified facility about 60 kilometers from the capital, Kabul, because Cheney was there. Cheney said a “loud boom” drove him briefly into a bomb shelter, but it was “never an option” to scrap plans to go on to Kabul and meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
“I think they (Taleban) clearly try to find ways to question the authority of the central government and striking at Bagram with a suicide bomber ... is one way to do that,” he said. The blast came around 10:00 a.m. (0530 GMT) as he was preparing to fly to Kabul for talks on how to defeat a feared spring offensive by the Taleban and their Al-Qaeda allies.
Amid conflicting reports on the death toll, an AFP reporter outside the base saw 11 bodies — in coffins, on stretchers and in body bags — being brought out and handed over to distraught relatives. “I have heard that one of my brothers has been killed,” said one weeping man at the gates of the base.
The US-led coalition said three foreign nationals were killed, including a US soldier, and six Afghan civilians. In Seoul, military officials said a South Korean soldier had died. Twenty-seven people were wounded, the coalition said.
The suicide bomber was on foot and blew himself up at the outermost gate of the base, where Cheney spent the night before his meeting with Karzai. He later flew out of Afghanistan bound for Oman. “Our security measures were in place and the killer never had access to the base,” said base operations commander Lt. Col. James E. Bonner.
