Afghans began three days of national mourning on Wednesday for 41 people, many of them children, killed in the country’s worst suicide attack to date.
The attack, in the relatively peaceful north of Afghanistan, shakes public confidence in the ability of the Afghan government and the 50 000 foreign troops in the country to provide security more than six years after the Taliban were ousted from power.
”Now the number of dead is 41 and the number of wounded is 81,” provincial governor Mohammad Alam Ishaaqzai told Reuters.
The Taliban have carried out more than 130 suicide attacks in Afghanistan so far this year, but the insurgents denied responsibility for Tuesday’s attack on a group of visiting parliamentarians as they were being greeted by schoolchildren.
Asked who was responsible for the blast, Ishaaqzai blamed ”the enemies of Afghanistan”, a term usually used to refer to the Taliban. ”An investigation is under way to find out more details of the attack,” he said.
The bomber approached the parliamentary delegation on foot as schoolchildren lined up to welcome them on a visit to a sugar factory in Baghlan. Large crowds had also turned out to greet the deputies, five of whom were killed in the bombing.
”This was an inhuman attack that killed many children,” said Ishaaqzai.
There were still pools of blood on the street at the site of the bombing on Wednesday as police collected body parts and put them in plastic bags. School notebooks and children’s sandals lay strewn on the ground.
”We are treating the wounded and the condition of some is very critical,” said Dr Mohammad Rokai at the local hospital. ”The dead and wounded are mostly children.”
Baghlan residents peered glumly at the bomb site from behind police cordons.
”One of my brothers is missing, he’s 12-years-old. We don’t know if he’s alive of dead,” said Shafiqullah.
‘Act of cowardice’
The Taliban have stepped up their attacks, including suicide raids, in the past two years as part an insurgency to topple the Afghan government and drive out foreign troops who are stationed in Afghanistan under the command of Nato and the United States military.
But a spokes person for the group said the insurgents were not behind it. The Taliban usually distance themselves from attacks that largely kill civilians.
Some of the wounded were sent for treatment to the key northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, as the hospital in Baghlan could not cope up with the number of casualties.
The United States condemned the attack.
”The terrorist attack today in Afghanistan is a despicable act of cowardice and it reminds us who the enemy is — extremists with evil in their hearts who target innocent Muslim men, women and children,” White House spokesperson Dana Perino said in a statement.
Northern Afghanistan has been relatively peaceful and prosperous compared with the south and east, where Taliban suicide attacks are all too common and insurgents are locked in almost daily battles with Afghan and foreign forces.
Nato commanders say the Taliban are far from having a unified organisation and consist of a number of factions operating more or less independently under loose guidelines handed down from a governing council.
Al-Qaeda operatives and at least one other rebel organisation are also active in Afghanistan.
The insurgents’ strategy is aimed at convincing Afghans that their government and its Western backers are unable to bring security to the country, which has already suffered nearly three decades of almost constant war. – Reuters