Afghanistan bomb attacks kill 16
At least 16 people, many of them children, were killed in explosions at the office of a US security contractor in Afghanistan’s capital and a school in the south east as the country moves towards its first post-Taliban election.
A powerful car bomb tore through Dyncorp, an American firm based in Kabul that provides security for Afghan president Hamid Karzai and works for the US government in Iraq, killing at least seven people, including two Americans, and wounding several others.
Hours earlier, a blast wrecked a religious school in south-eastern Afghanistan, killing at least eight children and one adult.
Security officials have issued several warnings in recent weeks that anti-government militants, including the ousted Taliban, could try to mount attacks to disrupt the landmark presidential election on October 9.
Karzai’s office said two Americans, three Nepalese and two Afghans were confirmed dead in the Kabul blast.
Karzai and US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad expressed shock at the bombing.
“This cowardly attack will not deter US participation in the ongoing effort to help Afghanistan stand on its own feet,” Khalilzad said, describing the bombing as a ”terrorist attack”.
Dyncorp is a division of Computer Sciences Corporation based in El Segundo, California. CSC spokesman Mike Dickerson said the Dyncorp office was hit by “an apparent car bombing”.
The blast occurred in Kabul’s Shar-e Naw district, a bustling area with the offices of international organisations and guesthouses used by their staff.
The Dyncorp building burned fiercely after the explosion, which blew out the windows of surrounding houses.
Reporters saw the mutilated body of one man lying in the street before Afghan police and foreign security guards pushed them back at gunpoint.
Emergency workers ferried the victims to a hospital in ambulances and picked body parts from the street.
“It was a very, very big explosion, and there were a lot of injured,” said Ahmad Emal, a young shopkeeper watching from behind the police cordon. “These foreigners should leave the residential areas.”
On Saturday night, an explosion ripped through the Mullah Khel religious school near Zormat, 80 miles south of Kabul, in the Paktia province. Eight children between the ages of seven and 15 were killed, and 15 other people were injured, three of them critically, said Paktia governor Asadullah Wafa.
US Master Sgt Ann Bennett said nine children and one adult were killed, and several other people were wounded. The differing death tolls could not immediately be explained.
The US military, which sent medics to help after the blast, said the cause was unclear.
Wafa said a bomb was planted on a second-floor balcony by ”puppets listening to their bosses outside the country”.
He did not elaborate, but his remark appeared aimed at neighbouring Pakistan, which many Afghans accuse of not doing enough to prevent Taliban militants from mounting cross-border attacks.
The school received funding from an international aid group, Wafa said, which could have made it a target for Taliban-led militants.
The school was also was used to register voters for the elections – a process which Taliban militants vowed to disrupt.
A dozen election workers and more than 20 Afghans carrying voter identification cards have been killed in attacks blamed largely on the Taliban, ousted by a US invasion in late 2001.
