A massive suicide car bomb struck outside the Indian embassy in Kabul on Thursday, killing 17 people and injuring 63 more, most of them civilians, in an attack claimed by Taliban militants. In a statement on their website, the Islamist insurgent group said that one of their "martyrs" had carried out the attack in the heavily fortified central diplomatic area, and said the Indian embassy "was the main target".
The attack took place just after 8.30 am (0400 GMT) on busy Interior Ministry Street, sending a huge plume of smoke and dust into the air and causing carnage and chaos during the morning rush hour. Interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP the toll had risen to 17 from an initial 12, including two police officers and 15 civilians.
Fifty civilians were among the wounded, with 13 police officers also injured. The Taliban statement, as is usual when it claims responsibility for suicide attacks, exaggerated the extent of the damage and the death toll. The dead, it said, "included a few high-ranking officials of the embassy (and) 35 soldiers of foreign and Afghan nationality."
"The explosion caused damage to the walls of the Indian embassy, which was the main target," it added. It identified the suicide bomber as "Khalid" from the Paghman district of Kabul province. Indian officials - in New Delhi and at the Kabul embassy - said no one at the embassy was killed, though some guards had sustained injuries as the blast blew out glass windows and doors.
No foreign troops were reported killed. A similar suicide attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul in July 2008 killed 60 people and was blamed on Taliban militants linked to Pakistan's intelligence agencies, sending tensions between New Delhi and Islamabad soaring.
That attack, which remains the deadliest in Kabul, led to stringent new security measures such as concrete blast barriers at the embassy - which Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao said in New Delhi had limited the impact of Thursday's explosion. In a statement, Afghan President Hamid Karzai called the perpetrators "barbaric" and said: "This is a terrorist attack, and an obvious attack on defenceless Afghan civilians."
Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in a statement: "This is another example of the Taliban's total disregard for the lives of the Afghan people." UN chief Ban Ki-moon condemned the attack as "senseless", as did the United States. "There is no justification for this kind of senseless violence," US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters in Washington, echoing an earlier statement by the US embassy in Kabul.
It was the fifth audacious assault on the Afghan capital in two months, as the Taliban brings its intensifying anti-government insurgency to the most heavily fortified part of the country. Windows were blown from dozens of shops and survivors staggered around the bloodied streets in the diplomatic area, witnesses said. An Indian diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity said that "the dead would have been many more" had the blast occurred an hour later when the embassy's visa section was due to open. Most of the dead and injured were rush-hour passers-by, he said, adding that the embassy would be closed for two weeks for repairs.
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