KABUL, 18 June 2007 — A suicide bomber destroyed a police bus in Kabul yesterday, killing 35 people and wounding dozens in the deadliest attack in Afghanistan since the Taleban regime was toppled in 2001.
Separately a roadside bomb tore through a military vehicle in the southern province of Kandahar and killed three soldiers with the US-led coalition and an Afghan interpreter, the US military said. Most of the dead in the blast in Kabul were instructors going to work at the city’s police academy but bystanders were also killed, police said. The wounded included five foreigners.
The explosion turned the bus into a skeleton of blackened and mangled metal. Body parts and bits of human flesh were flung across a wide area. The Al-Qaeda-linked Taleban movement claimed responsibility.
“We have got 35 people martyred and 52 wounded,” Kabul province police chief Esmatullah Dauladzai said. “Those killed include mostly officers and civilians.” Among the wounded were two Japanese, a Korean and two Pakistani nationals, he said.
The government’s Criminal Investigation Department chief, Alishah Paktiawal, also said 35 people were killed. “It is the work of terrorists, Al-Qaeda and murderers of the people,” Paktiawal added.
In September 2002 a car bomb in Kabul killed 30 people. Yesterday’s attack was also the fifth suicide blast in two days with one in the capital on Friday killing three Afghan laborers.
“Our investigations indicate that it was a suicide bombing carried out by an individual inside the bus. He was seen by witnesses wearing black clothes and was in the bus,” Dauladzai said.
The Taleban said the attacker had infiltrated the police on the orders of one of the group’s most senior commanders, Jalaluddin Haqqani. “Under his direct orders, he strapped explosives on his body and blew himself up inside the police bus,” spokesman Salahuddin Ayobi said by telephone from an undisclosed location. The blast was in a crowded part of the city center. Two nearby minibuses were damaged. Sirens of ambulances were heard across Kabul as the wounded were ferried to hospitals.
“When I arrived I could see dead and wounded lying everywhere,” said one young man who gave his name only as Abbas. “Many of them were torn into pieces. Many of them were headless and others had no legs or arms.”
President Hamid Karzai led the condemnation saying “such inhuman and un-Islamic acts” could not stop Afghanistan from moving toward stability.
