Afghanistan: Four dead in suicide bomb blast

A suicide car bomber attacked a convoy of US contract workers and military personnel in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul today, killing at least four civilians, officials said. A soldier opened fire on the crowd after the attack, killing one civilian.

The suicide attack in western Kabul also wounded four civilians and a foreigner, said Gen. Ali Shah Paktiawal. He said an international military vehicle and seven civilian vehicles were damaged in the attack. The bomber also died.

Zabiullah Mujahid, who claims to speak for the Taliban, claimed the group’s responsibility for the blast.

Witnesses gave a higher casualty count from the suicide attack than police, saying seven or eight people had died.

Maj. Sheldon Smith, a US spokesman for troops training Afghan police and army soldiers, said US contract workers and US military personnel were in the convoy. He had no further details. A spokesman at the US base at Bagram said workers with DynCorp, who are helping train Afghan police, were attacked.

A soldier on a Humvee “mistakenly” opened fire on the crowd after the suicide attack, killing one civilian and wounding three, said Zalmai Khan, deputy Kabul police chief. He said Afghans were angered over the shooting and wanted to demonstrate, but that police calmed the situation down.

Khan did not say what nationality the soldier was, but a reporter at the scene said Americans in Humvees had responded to the suicide attack.

The blast came amid a wave of violence lashing Afghanistan, particularly the volatile south, including a suicide blast on Friday that targeted a Nato convoy at Tirin Kot in Uruzgan province, killing 10 people including five children and a Dutch soldier.

Kabul has been spared the worst of this year’s bloodshed which has claimed 2,300 lives so far, mostly insurgents, according to an AP count based on figures from US, Nato, UN and Afghan officials.

Today’s blast destroyed the attacker’s car, wrecked other civilian vehicles including a taxi and shattered windows of roadside homes and shops.

“We were busy with our work making window frames. I heard a very strong sound, and when I turned around I saw a big fire in the street,” said Mohammed Noor, 22, who owns a nearby carpentry shop.

He said the blast fired bits of metal shorn from the attacker’s car into his shop front.

Noor said he helped four seriously wounded people into cars to ferry them to hospital. He said at least seven people were killed and 10 were wounded – a higher casualty toll than police offered.

Children from a school about 100 meters from the blast site looked on as investigators examined the wrecked vehicles.

This spring supporters of the Taliban regime ousted by US-led forces in late 2001 have increased bombings and suicide attacks, but Nato and US forces claim to have the rebels on the back foot with a wave of offensive operations in the south and east.

Taliban spokesmen have warned Afghan civilians to stay away from military convoys, saying militants do not intend to kill them, but suicide bombings commonly kill or wound far more civilians than military targets – a fact Nato repeatedly points out.