28 killed, 141 wounded in blast in Afghan capital

By AMIR SHAH

The Associated Press

July 06, 2008

A suicide car bomb exploded outside the Indian Embassy in central Kabul on Monday, killing 28 people and wounding 141 in the deadliest attack this year in the Afghan capital, officials said.

The massive bomb exploded near a row of metal turnstiles outside the embassy, where dozens of Afghan men line up every morning to apply for visas. The embassy is located on a busy, tree-lined street near Afghanistan's Interior Ministry in the city center.

Several nearby shops were damaged or destroyed in the blast, and smoldering ruins covered the street. The explosion rattled much of the Afghan capital.

'Several shopkeepers have died. I have seen shopkeepers under the rubble,' said Ghulam Dastagir, a shopkeeper who was wounded in the blast.

Abdullah Fahim, the spokesman for the Ministry of Public Health, said the explosion killed at least 28 people and wounded 141. The ministry collected information from the scene and several Kabul hospitals.

The explosion was the deadliest attack in Kabul since a suicide bomber attacked an army bus last September, killing 30 people.

Shortly after the attack, a woman ran out of a Kabul hospital screaming, crying and hitting her face with both of her hands. Her two children, a girl named Lima and a boy named Mirwais, had been killed.

'Oh my God!' the woman screamed. 'They are both dead.'

Afghanistan Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta visited the embassy shortly after the attack, ministry spokesman Sultan Ahmed Baheen said.

'India and Afghanistan have a deep relationship between each other. Such attacks of the enemy will not harm our relations,' Spanta told the embassy staff, according to Baheen.

The Indian ambassador and his deputy were not inside the embassy at the time of the blast, Baheen said.

Militants have frequently attacked Indian offices and projects around Afghanistan since launching an insurgency after the ouster of the Taliban at the end of the 2001. Many Taliban militants have roots in Pakistan, which has long had a troubled relationship with India.

While Afghanistan has seen increasing violence in recent months, Kabul has been largely spared the random bomb attacks that Taliban militants use in their fight against Afghan and international troops.

In September 2006, a suicide bomber near the gates of the Interior Ministry killed 12 people and wounded 42 others. After that blast, additional guards and barriers were posted on the street.

In two separate bombings Monday against police convoys in the country's south, seven officers were killed and 10 others were wounded, officials said.

In Uruzgan province, a roadside bomb killed four police on patrol and wounded seven others, said provincial police chief Juma Gul Himat.

In the Zhari district of Kandahar, another roadside blast killed three officers and wounded three others, said district chief Niyaz Mohammad Sarhadi.

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Karzai orders chopper attack probe

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By AMIR SHAH and JASON STRAZIUSO

The Associated Press

July 06, 2008

Afghan officials said fighter aircraft battling militants accidentally killed up to 27 Afghans walking to a wedding ceremony in eastern Afghanistan early Sunday, the second military attack in three days with reports of civilian deaths.

The U.S. military blamed the claims on militant propaganda and said its missiles only struck insurgents.

President Hamid Karzai had already ordered an investigation into allegations that missiles from U.S. helicopters struck civilians on Friday in eastern Afghanistan, though the Defense Ministry said Sunday that attack on the Nuristan-Kunar border killed or wounded 20 militants.

U.S. Army Gen. David D. McKiernan, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, told The Associated Press on Sunday that the two incidents were being investigated. He noted that militants hide among and intimidate civilians.

U.S. spokesman 1st Lt. Nathan Perry said the military has repeatedly seen militants falsely claim civilian were killed.

'Whenever we do an airstrike the first thing they're going to cry is 'Airstrike killed civilians' when the missile actually struck militant extremists we were targeting in the first place,' Perry said. 'At this time we don't believe we've harmed anyone except for the combatants.'

In a statement, Karzai cited allegations by Tamim Nuristani, the governor of Nuristan province, that 15 civilians were killed and seven wounded in the Friday attack. During a Cabinet meeting on Sunday, top Afghan officials prayed for any innocent lives lost, a presidential palace statement said.

'The killing and wounding of our countrymen as the result of airstrikes is news that always makes us sad,' Karzai said.

In the second incident early Sunday, the chief government official in the Deh Bala district of Nangarhar province said villagers reported that as many as 27 people walking in a group toward a wedding were killed in a bombing. Up to 11 other people were wounded, Haji Amishah Gul said.

Nuristan provincial police chief spokesman Ghafor Khan said that fighter aircraft attacked a group of militants near the village of Kacu, but that one of the missiles went off course and hit the wedding party. Khan said many militants were killed in the attack as well.

Both officials relied on reports called in by telephone from villagers. The area was too remote for officials or reporters to reach.

Gul said the group killed included men, women and children. Six of those wounded were taken to the provincial hospital in Jalalabad. Lal Wazir, an Afghan who helped bring the wounded to the hospital, said the airstrike occurred at 6:30 a.m.

'The wedding participants were on their way to the groom's house,' Wazir said outside the hospital, his tunic covered in blood after carrying some of those wounded.

'They stopped in a narrow location for rest. The plane came and bombed the area. There were between 80 to 90 people altogether. We have carried six of the injured to this hospital, and more might be coming. The exact number of casualties is not clear,' he said.

A U.S.-led coalition statement said an airstrike killed several militants in Nangarhar.

The issue of civilian casualties has caused friction between the Afghan government and U.S. and NATO troops, and has weakened the standing of Western-backed Karzai in the eyes of the population.

Karzai has repeatedly called for better coordination between Afghan and foreign troops in pursuing militants through populated areas, and for international troops to cut down on civilian casualties. Deaths of ordinary Afghans caused a huge outcry last year, but there have been fewer accusations of such killings in recent months.

McKiernan said NATO uses a 'very judicious and strict application of lethal force.'

'Civilian casualties are very, very important in this campaign. One is one to many,' he said. 'I do think we have ... the right procedures in place to mitigate and minimize any collateral damage to people or material.'

Perry said Sunday that military reports still indicated that the Friday airstrike by coalition helicopters in Nuristan hit two vehicles carrying militants who had attacked a NATO base with mortars.

Karzai suggested that Afghan civilians may have been fleeing at the time of the strike because of a warning from the U.S. coalition.

'Coalition forces are saying that this operation was against armed insurgents in the area, but Gov. Nuristani is insisting that three hours before this airstrike, people were informed by international forces that they should leave the area because of a possible airstrike against insurgents,' Karzai said in a statement.

Elsewhere, in the southern province of Helmand _ the country's other hotly contested region _ a clash killed seven Taliban and two police, provincial police Chief

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