41 killed as explosion rips Indian embassy

A car bomb ripped through the front wall of the Indian embassy in Kabul yesterday, killing 41 people, including the Indian military attache, in perhaps the deadliest attack in the Afghanistan capital since the fall of the Taliban.

The massive blast, which rattled much of Kabul around 8:30 am, was detonated by a suicide bomber and damaged two embassy vehicles entering the embassy compound, outside which dozens of Afghans queue up every morning to apply for visas.

The Indian ambassador and his deputy were not inside the embassy at the time of the blast

The embassy is in a busy, tree-lined street near Afghanistan's Interior Ministry in the city center. Several nearby shops were damaged or destroyed in the blast, and smoldering rubble covered the street.

"Several shopkeepers have died. I have seen shopkeepers under the rubble," said Ghulam Dastagir, a shopkeeper wounded in the blast.

Najib Nikzad, an Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman, said the blast killed 41 people. Earlier, Abdullah Fahim, the spokesman for the Ministry of Public Health, said 141 people were injured in the attack.

In New Delhi, Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said four Indians, including the military attache and a diplomat, were killed in the attack.

Five Afghan security guards at the nearby Indonesian embassy too were killed. The windows of the building were shattered and doors and gates broken. Two diplomats suffered minor injuries, Indonesia's Foreign Ministry said.

In Washington, Gordon Johndroe, a White House national security spokesman said: "Extremists continue to show their disregard for all human life and their willingness to kill fellow Muslims as well as others. The United States stands with the people of Afghanistan and India as we face this common enemy."

Afghanistan has seen a sharp rise in attacks by Taliban militants in recent months. Insurgents are packing bombs with more explosives than ever, one reason why more US and NATO troops were killed in June than in any other month since the 2001 invasion of the country.

But a Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, denied the militant group was behind yesterday's blast. "Whenever we carry out a suicide attack, we confirm it," Mujahid said. "The Taliban did not carry out this one."

The Taliban tend to claim responsibility for attacks that inflict heavy tolls on international or Afghan troops, and deny responsibility for attacks that primarily kill Afghan civilians.

The blast was the deadliest in Afghanistan since a suicide bomber killed more than 100 people at a dog fighting competition in Kandahar in February.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack, saying militants trying to rupture the friendship between Afghanistan and India have carried it out.

The Interior Ministry said: "terrorists have carried out this attack in coordination and consultation with some of the active intelligence circles in the region".

Pakistan's Foreign Minister, Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi, too, condemned the attack and terrorism in all forms.

Afghanistan Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta visited the embassy shortly after the attack.

"India and Afghanistan have a deep relationship… Such attacks of the enemy will not harm our relations," Spanta is reported to have told the embassy staff.

Yesterday's attack was the sixth suicide bombing in Kabul this year. Insurgent violence has killed more than 2,200 people in Afghanistan this year, according the Associated Press.