A bomb blast destroyed the wall of a United Nations compound close to the presidential palace in Kabul early on Thursday but there were no casualties, the Afghan security service and international peacekeepers said.
”A bomb exploded at around 4.50am [00.20am GMT] this morning,” intelligence officer Tajuddin reported from the site.
”It did not cause any casualties but destroyed the wall of a UN compound in first street, Shashdarak district,” said Tajuddin.
Windows were also shattered in the explosion.
The bomb had been placed near the wall of the compound, which is close to the presidential palace and International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) headquarters in central Kabul.
”We don’t know yet who planted it,” Tajuddin said.
Isaf also said there were no casualties in the explosion, which occurred in a residential street 500m from its headquarters.
”No casualties have been reported and Isaf troops are on the scene investigating,” the international peacekeeping force said in a statement.
”Neither the CLJ site, government buildings nor Isaf installations were affected,” it said, referring to the site of the constitutional loya jirga (”grand assembly”) in west Kabul.
”We continue to investigate the site and Isaf will be making further reports in due course.”
The blast follows two attacks in which a total of seven rockets hit Kabul since Tuesday last week during the loya jirga. A house was damaged by one rocket but no one was hurt by any of the blasts.
Taliban militants claimed responsibility for those attacks and warned of further attempts to disrupt the loya jirga convention, which is debating the country’s new Constitution amid tight security.
Bomb attacks are relatively rare in the capital, which is patrolled by about 5 000 Isaf troops as well as Afghan police.
A car bomb attack on UN offices in the southern city of Kandahar on November 11 month injured three people. A minor bomb exploded outside the offices of Oxfam and Save the Children in Kabul earlier that month, damaging a wall and shattering windows, but no one was injured.
A surge in violence in southern and southeastern Afghanistan has forced aid agencies and the UN to suspend or scale back operations, undermining vital reconstruction and relief work in the war-ravaged country.
Attacks on aid workers have risen in the past 12 months from once a month to once every two days, according to the Care relief agency.
At least 12 humanitarian workers have been killed since the end of March, when a Salvadoran-born Red Cross worker was shot dead execution-style by suspected Taliban fighters between Kandahar and neighbouring Uruzgan province. — Sapa-AFP