Kabul car bomb blast kills at least 22

A powerful car bomb rocked a busy market area in the centre of Kabul today, killing at least 22 people in the bloodiest attack in the Afghan capital since the fall of the Taliban.

A UN security official said 22 people were dead and about 65 people were rushed to one hospital. Policemen were among the dead.

Emergency vehicles and armoured personnel carriers from the international peacekeeping force rushed to the scene in a crowded market near the Ministry of Information.

Witnesses said a smaller explosion had drawn crowds to the area when the car bomb – apparently in a taxi – exploded in front of a building containing shops selling TV and satellite dishes – all forbidden during hard-line Taliban rule. The second floor of the building housed a small hotel.

Police sealed off the area, but emergency vehicles could be seen rushing injured to hospitals. Some dazed victims were led away, their clothing ripped and covered in blood.

Five or six vehicles were destroyed, windows shattered and doors of shops ripped off their hinges.

“This bomb was inside a taxi,” said police spokesman Dul Aqa. “It was a very, very strong explosion. We can’t say exactly who was behind it but we know the last bombs were al-Qaida and former Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.”

Hekmatyar issued a call for jihad, or holy war, this week to drive US and foreign troops including international peacekeepers from Afghanistan.

The death toll was uncertain because Afghans often pick up the bodies of their relatives and bury them immediately without reporting the death. But a UN security official said at least 22 people had died.

The blast occurred in one of the most congested areas of the city on a day when many residents do their shopping before Friday’s Muslim prayer day. One shopper, Haji Abdul Aroof, said he saw four bodies lying in the street.

“We came to see what was happening when the second bomb went off,” he said. “There was a powerful explosion and we all ran.”

President Hamid Karzai was out of the city, attending the wedding celebration of his brother in Kandahar.

Thirty-four people were taken to Jamhuriat Hospital, which lacked facilities to handle broken bones and other serious injuries. They were transferred to the Italian Emergency Hospital and the Wazir Akbar Khan Hospital, doctors said.

At the Italian hospital, staff posted lists with the names of 42 wounded. Staff members said about 65 people had been taken to the hospital, but some of the most seriously wounded could not be identified.

Crowds of worried family and friends were pushing and shoving to get a look at the list.

Several main roads in the city were blocked and additional police and soldiers, armed with rocket launchers and automatic weapons, took positions at strategic points in the capital.

The blast was the most serious in a string of bombings that have occurred in the Afghan capital since August 15 when a small blast shattered windows at the Ministry of Telecommunications.

Previous bombings had been small, causing few casualties and relatively little damage.

Hekmatyar was a key anti-communist rebel ally of the United States during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Heavily backed by Pakistan, Hekmatyar was considered one of the strongest of the anti-communist commanders during the 1980s war.

He was named the prime minister in the first Islamic transitional government that followed the end of communist rule in Afghanistan in 1992. But instead he engaged in a bitter feud with his arch rival, Ahmed Shah Massood, killed a year ago by suicide bombers.

From 1992 to 1996 Massood and Hekmatyar and their respective allies engaged in brutal fighting that killed 50,000 people in the capital, most of them civilians.

Hekmatyar and Massood finally made peace in the summer of 1996 but by September the Taliban had taken control. Hekmatyar fled to Iran rather than take refuge in the Panjshir Valley with Massood and the northern alliance.

Since the collapse of the Taliban, Hekmatyar has been expelled from Iran. His whereabouts is not known but he is believed to be in eastern Afghanistan. Just a couple of days ago he sent an audio cassette with a warning to the US special forces and to the international peacekeepers in Kabul. He urged the faithful to wage a holy war against them and warned them to leave the country.

This was his second warning.