A bomb attack on a bus carrying Afghan army troops killed at least 27 people on Saturday in the capital, a Reuters witness said.
Police at the scene initially said it was a suicide bomb attack, but one official said it could have been caused by a large land mine.
”I think it was a mine,” Deputy Interior Minister Mohammad Munir Mangal told Reuters at the scene. ”There are reports of another blast in the city, but it has not yet been confirmed.”
The bus was split into two by the blast and shop windows were shattered all around. Residents helped police pick up pieces of flesh and put them into plastic bags. ”The explosion happened just after a group of Afghan National Army soldiers got onto the bus,” said witness Mohammad Zaher who had cuts in his forehead from flying glass.
One security official who witnessed the blast said several civilian passersby were also killed.
Taliban insurgents have largely shied away from large-scale conventional attacks on foreign and Afghan forces since suffering heavy casualties in pitched battles last year.
Instead, the rebels have resorted to suicide and roadside bomb attacks aimed at convincing ordinary Afghans their government and its Western backers are unable to provide security.
A suicide bomb attack in June on a bus carrying police officers in Kabul killed 24, one of the deadliest such attacks since Untied States-led and Afghan forces ousted the Taliban from power in the wake of the September 11 2001 attacks. – Reuters