Multinational security forces in Afghanistan on Thursday confirmed the discovery of a bomb concealed in a child’s remote-controlled car outside a United Nations guest house in the centre of Kabul.
The device, which was destroyed in a controlled explosion late on Wednesday, was spotted by a United Nations employee as he drove up to the compound, said Commander Geoff Wintle of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
A cordon was immediately thrown around the area and a German bomb disposal team was called in. The device was detonated shortly after 10:00 pm (1730 GMT) in a blast that caused minor damage to nearby buildings. There were no casualties.
Kabul has been plagued by a series of explosions over the past few months, culminating in a car bomb which killed 30 people on a busy city centre street on September 5.
A small bomb exploded outside the same UN guesthouse in late August when two people suffered minor injuries. The attacks have been blamed on al-Qaida and Taliban fighters or supporters of former prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
Security officials say extremists are hoping to destabilise the fragile post-war peace in Afghanistan and return the country to chaos. General Akin Zorlu, the Turkish commander of ISAF, told a news conference on Thursday that the improvised toy-bomb was of a type unseen before during ISAF’s 10-month presence in Kabul.
Last month the official Bakhter news agency reported that a child lost his hand when a brightly-coloured pen he found in the street exploded in his grasp.
Bombs disguised as toys are frequently discovered in the border regions of neighbouring Pakistan where they have cause numerous injuries.
Wintle, meanwhile, said the device may not have been targeted at the United Nations and played down its significance.
”There is no evidence to link it specifically to ISAF or the UN. The device was located 100 metres away from the UN building, but there are lots of different houses and compounds in the area,” he said.
”There are different elements in Kabul who would wish to disrupt the peace in process. Clearly a country that has had 23 years of conflict has elements that would like to destabilise the situation.”
He said the device was designed to draw attention rather than cause casualties or damage.
”People here are capable of building sophisticated devices, they can do harm if they want to.”
Earlier this month the United Nations took the precaution of diverting its humanitarian flights from Kabul’s international airport to a nearby US-controlled military base following a security alert.
ISAF increased patrols around the airport, which remained open to commercial traffic, following intelligence reports that there was a potential threat to aircraft.
The UN said it imposed the diversion for three days, merely as a safety precaution, but services were now running as normal. Manoel e Almeida da Silva, the UN’s chief representative in Afghanistan, confirmed Wednesday’s bomb incident, adding that local police and interior ministry forces attended the scene. – Sapa-AFP