Two civilians were killed and 60 people including 18 soldiers were wounded in a huge blast at a store of confiscated weapons in northern Afghanistan, officials said on Friday.
The explosion happened late Thursday at Jabalussaraj in Parwan province, where an UN-backed disarmament programme was holding the guns and ammunition, provincial police chief Abdul Rehman Saeed Khail told AFP.
The blast was so powerful that it sent rockets and ordnance crashing onto houses several hundred metres (yards) from the base, causing some of the civilian casualties.
Khail said the blast was likely an accident but it was also possible that it was the work of the "enemies of Afghanistan", a term used usually to refer to militants from the ousted Taleban regime.
"Two civilians were killed, 42 civilians and 18 soldiers were wounded in the weapon depot explosion on Tapa-e-Surkh hilltop," the police chief said.
"We have launched an investigation, the cause of the explosion may be an accident but we cannot rule out the possibility of involvement of enemies of Afghanistan in the incident," he said.
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