BAGHLAN, Afghanistan, 8 November 2007 — Afghans began three days of mourning yesterday for 52 people, many of them children, killed in the country’s worst suicide attack. The blast, in the relatively peaceful north, has shaken public confidence in the ability of the government and the 50,000 foreign troops in the country to provide security more than six years after the Taleban were ousted from power.
“In the very miserable incident which took place yesterday, six of Afghanistan’s hard-working, honest members of parliament were martyred, and Afghan people including school teachers, students and children were also martyred, and many were wounded,” President Hamid Karzai told a news conference in Kabul.
Hundreds of people attended funerals for the dead in the rural town of Pul-e-Khumri, 150 kilometers north of Kabul. A military plane flew the bodies of the six MPs, including prominent opposition figure Mustafa Kazimi, back to the capital, where several government officials attended a ceremony. The parliamentarians, elected in Afghanistan’s first democratic polls in 2005 — three years after the removal of the Taleban government — were to be given a state funeral today.
The governor of Baghlan where the attack took place said the death toll had risen to 52 and about 100 people were wounded. The Taleban have carried out more than 130 suicide bombings in Afghanistan so far this year, but the insurgents denied responsibility for Tuesday’s attack on visiting parliamentarians as they were being greeted by schoolchildren and elders.
The bomber approached the parliamentary delegation on foot as children lined up to welcome them on a visit to a sugar factory in Baghlan. Large crowds had also turned out to see the deputies. There were still pools of blood at the site yesterday morning as police collected body parts and put them in plastic bags. School notebooks and children’s sandals lay strewn on the ground.
“We are treating the wounded and the condition of some is very critical,” said Dr. Mohammad Rokai at the local hospital. “The dead and wounded are mostly children.”
Baghlan residents peered glumly at the bombsite from behind police cordons. “One of my brothers is missing, he’s 12 years old. We don’t know if he’s alive or dead,” said Shafiqullah.
Some of the dead and wounded appeared to have suffered bullet wounds and some residents said Afghan security forces began shooting wildly after the blast. “This attack was carried out by the Taleban, but only 10 people were killed by the blast. The rest of the victims are from gunfire from the security forces,” said Abdul Qadir, pointing to what appeared to be a bullet hole in his dead son’s neck.
A Taleban spokesman said the insurgents were not behind Tuesday’s attack. The rebels usually distance themselves from attacks that largely kill civilians. The insurgents’ strategy is aimed at convincing Afghans that Karzai’s government and its Western backers are unable to bring security to the country, which has already suffered nearly three decades of almost constant war.
Northern Afghanistan has been relatively peaceful and prosperous compared with the south and east, where Taleban suicide attacks are all too common and insurgents are locked in almost daily battles with Afghan and foreign forces.
