A suicide car bomber blew up his vehicle outside a Nato military base at Kabul’s main airport on Tuesday killing at least two civilians, in the biggest attack in the Afghan capital since last month’s presidential election.
The attack was a further demonstration of deteriorating security at a time when violence is at its worst, an unresolved election has put the country’s political future in doubt and Western popular support for the war is being tested.
The Interior Ministry said two civilians were killed and six wounded, two of them seriously, in the airport attack. It did not say whether Western troops were hurt at the base. The Nato-led force was not immediately able to comment.
A shopkeeper who witnessed the blast told Reuters the suicide bomber had detonated his explosives close to one of the entrances of the military side of the airport.
”A suicide bomber in a ‘Surf’ car [off-road vehicle] exploded himself near the main gate [guarded] by Nepali guards,” said the shopkeeper, Izmarai, who uses only one name.
”Another man was riding his bicycle and fell to the ground. The police carried another wounded person away,” he said.
Huge flames could be seen rising from the site of the blast and the wail of sirens could be heard several kilometres from the civil-military airport that has seen a series of Taliban rocket attacks and a suicide strike in the past.
Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesperson, said by telephone from an undisclosed location that the militants were responsible for the blast, targeting Western forces.
An Afghan soldier, Mohibullah, who said he had witnessed the blast, said two foreign soldiers had been killed, however, this could not immediately be confirmed by the Nato-led force.
Afghan officials running the civil section of the airport said domestic and foreign flights were not interrupted.
The attack comes less than a month after a suicide car bomber struck the entrance to the Nato headquarters in Kabul, killing at least seven people and wounding 100 in the run-up to the vote.
Election outcome in doubt
Election officials said they were finishing up the long-delayed count of results from the August 20 election, and were due to publish an almost-complete tally later on Tuesday.
The latest results, with 74% of polling stations tallied, show President Hamid Karzai falling just shy of the 50% needed to avoid a run-off — so close the final outcome could be delayed for weeks more by fraud investigations.
Most of the remaining votes are in the south, where Karzai has had strong support but where his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, says ballots were stuffed on a huge scale.
Western officials initially hailed the election because Taliban fighters failed to scupper it, but as fraud allegations have mounted those assessments have become more guarded.
Results in the official tallies issued so far show Karzai winning 100% of the vote from entire southern villages, often with improbable totals: in one village in Kandahar province he won exactly 500 votes each at four separate polling stations.
On Monday the White House said Afghanistan needs to deal with the fraud allegations.
”They’ve got to address any accusations that are out there and assure people of the legitimacy of the election,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters.
After the election commission issues complete preliminary results — expected this week — the Electoral Complaints Commission, a separate fraud watchdog mainly appointed by the United Nations, can exclude ballots it thinks were fake.
Increased violence in Afghanistan has sapped public support for the war in the United States, which now has about 65 000 troops among the 103 000 foreign troops there.
The war has also become a matter of huge controversy in Germany, weeks before a general election there, after German troops called in a US air strike last week Afghan officials say killed scores of people, many of them civilians.
Karzai called the decision to bomb hijacked fuel trucks in the north of the country a major ”error of judgment”.
Chancellor Angela Merkel was to go before parliament later on Tuesday to explain the government’s strategy.
German Defence Secretary Franz Josef Jung has defied calls to resign over the incident — the deadliest involving German troops since World War II. Jung has said the attack was necessary and his information indicated only Taliban terrorists were killed.
The incident last Friday is a test for the new Nato commander, General Stanley McChrystal, who took charge of the force two months ago vowing to protect Afghan civilians. He has gone on television to reassure Afghans he is investigating it. — Reuters