Al-Qaida ‘regrouping for Afghanistan attacks’

OSAMA BIN LADEN’S al-Qaida network is regrouping and intends to bring Iraq-style bloodshed to Afghanistan, the nation’s defence minister said yesterday, warning that the country could be in for several months of intense violence ahead of key legislative elections.

Defence Minister Rahim Wardak said he had received intelligence that the terror organisation has slipped about half a dozen Arab agents into Afghanistan in the past three weeks, two of whom killed themselves in suicide bombings in the south against a packed mosque and a convoy of US troops.

“We have reports here and there that they have entered - at least half a dozen of them,” Mr Wardak said. “The last report is that they came in just close to the time of the mosque attack.”

The blast at the mosque on June 1 killed 20 mourners at the funeral of a moderate cleric who had been assassinated days earlier. The same day, a shoulder-launched, surface-to-air missile was fired at a US aircraft, but missed. On Monday, another suicide bomber drove up to a US military vehicle in Kandahar and detonated himself, wounding four US soldiers.

Authorities recovered the head of the mosque attacker and said he appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent. Mr Wardak said initial indications are that the second suicide attacker was also Arab.

Mr Wardak would not say where the al-Qaida fighters entered from, but other Afghan intelligence sources said the men are believed to have crossed the border from Pakistan’s Baluchistan province.

Pakistan vehemently denies it is a sanctuary for al-Qaida or the Taliban.

The bombings in Kandahar represented a sea change in the tactics of the insurgency, now in its fourth year. Afghan Taliban fighters have rarely resorted to suicide attacks, a practice more common among Arab militants.