The FBI on Tuesday took over the probe into the weekend bombing of a United States security firm in Kabul as the Afghan capital braced for further potential attacks in the run-up to the country’s landmark presidential election.
At least nine people were killed and dozens injured in Sunday’s blast at the office of US contractor DynCorp, which provides Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s guards and trains the country’s fledgling police force.
”We no longer have anyone on site. We have handed over the investigation to the FBI and the Kabul City Police,” said Ken Mackillop, spokesperson for the Nato-led international peacekeeping force.
US FBI agents were coming and going from the cordoned-off blast site, which was still strewn with broken glass and the burnt-out carcasses of cars, according to a Western security source.
A US forensic team was also expected to comb through the wreckage for further clues, the source said.
”Everything apart from the bodies is still in place. Nothing has been touched,” he added.
Meanwhile, Kabul braced itself for possible further strikes.
There were two security alerts in the embassy district of Wazir Akbar Khan on Tuesday morning.
The street that passes the US-led coalition’s Kabul compound and many major European embassies was blocked after a car-bomb alert at about 11am local time, but a Nato-led ordnance team established the suspect car had not been booby-trapped.
”It’s all over. It was just a vehicle that was broken down,” said US military spokesperson Major Rick Peat.
Just more than an hour later, a truck stopped on the same road outside the German embassy was suspected of carrying explosives.
Four dogs reacted to the vehicle at the gates of the embassy, peacekeeping soldiers and police at the site said.
Nato-led explosives teams were still investigating the truck to see whether it contained a bomb, he said.
With Afghanistan’s first presidential election just five weeks away, the culprits behind Sunday’s attack are still at large and details of exactly who was responsible remain obscure.
Mackillop said on Monday that Nato-led peacekeepers knew the blast had been caused by a remote-controlled device in either a truck or a car but were still unclear who carried out the attack.
Neither Nato troops nor US-led coalition forces were able to provide further details about the investigation on Tuesday.
Both al-Qaeda and the Taliban have claimed responsibility for the blast in statements.
Nato-led forces detained one suspect at Kabul airport, who was found with traces of explosives on his hands, but were unable to establish a link between the suspect and Sunday’s blast.
Despite heightened tension, international aid agencies and United Nations workers were allowed to move around the city and resume their work.
A ban on non-essential movement within the capital was lifted at 7pm on Monday, according to UN spokesperson Manoel de Almeida e Silva.
Security in Afghanistan has deteriorated in the run-up to the election with a string of attacks on soft targets such as election workers, civilians, aid agency staff, as well as government officials and US-led troops.
Remnants of the hardline Taliban regime, ousted by a US-led campaign in 2001, have vowed to disrupt the election and have mounted a guerrilla insurgency in the south and south-east of the country, as well as sporadic attacks in other parts of Afghanistan. — Sapa-AFP