By Tahir Qadiry
MAZAR-I-SHARIF
, Afghanistan, Nov 6 (Reuters) - A suicide attack on a parliamentary delegation killed at least 50 people in northern Afghanistan on Tuesday, a provincial official said, in the worst such blast in the country's history.
Five members of the Afghan parliament were among the dead and the toll was expected to rise. Schoolchildren were also among the victims in the town of Baghlan in the north of the country which had so far escaped the worst of Afghanistan's worsening violence.
"We have recorded 50 people dead so far, but there are still bodies on the streets we have not counted and some of the dead have already been taken away by their relatives," Baghlan provincial security chief Abdurrahman Sayedkhail told Reuters.
The shattered and scorched bodies of children and adults lay on the ground amid pools of blood and lumps of flesh as people scrambled to carry away the living and dead.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
A spokesman for the Islamist Taliban said the group was not behind the attack. The Taliban has killed more than 200 people this year in suicide bombings aimed at ousting the pro-Western government and driving out foreign troops.
The bomber was on foot and blew himself up as schoolchildren lined up to welcome the parliamentary delegation on a visit to a sugar factory in Baghlan. Large crowds had also turned out to greet the deputies, on an economic fact-finding mission.
"I saw bodies lying in the streets and some of the people were stealing the weapons of the dead soldiers. Children are screaming for help. It's like a nightmare," said local resident Mohammad Rahim. He said the blast had killed his two cousins, both schoolgirls.
Opposition spokesman and former Commerce Minister Mostafa Kazemi and four other parliamentary deputies were killed.
Afghan parliamentarian and spokesman Sayed Mustafa Kazimi talks to people of Baghlan prior to being killed by a suicide attack in Baghlan province, north of Kabul, Afghanistan on Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2007
"The bomber got very close to the delegation as they were being greeted. He got very close to Mostafa Kazemi and blew himself up," Sayedkhail said. "He was carrying a massive amount of explosives."
Afghan parliamentarian and opposition spokesman Mostafa Kazemi is seen in this undated photograph in Afghanistan. A suicide bomber killed 90 people and wounded 50 on November 6, 2007, in an attack on a group of visiting Afghan parliamentarians in the northern Afghan town of Baghlan, the director of the local hospital said. Five parliamentarians, including opposition spokesman Mostafa Kazemi, were among those killed, the provincial governor said. Baghlan's intelligence chief, Abdurrahman Sayedkhail, said the number of casualties was so high it was impossible to give an accurate number for now. REUTERS/Stringer (AFGHANISTAN)
A deputy agriculture minister and prominent woman parliamentarian Shukria Barakzai were among the wounded.
One Taliban spokesman said the group had not carried out the Baghlan attack.
"It might have been carried out by their rivals in the parliament," said Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahed. "These parliamentarians were all mujahideen in the past and killed lots of civilians. Maybe someone was trying to take revenge."
But the attack on Baghlan, a small market town in a melon-growing region with streets lined with citrus trees, had all the hallmarks of a Taliban operation.
(Writing by Jon Hemming, editing by Ralph Boulton)
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59 children dead in Afghan suicide attack
Saturday, November 10, 2007 at 08:01 EST
KABUL — Afghanistan's education ministry said Friday that a suicide attack this week had killed 59 children and five teachers, taking the death toll to 75 in the deadliest such bombing in the insurgency-hit country.
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Six lawmakers and five bodyguards were also killed in the blast on Tuesday in the northern province of Baghlan, which has been free of the regular attacks by Taliban and other extremist militants that plague the south and east.
"We have got 59 school children, aged from eight to 18, and five teachers killed in that blast," education ministry spokesman Zuhor Afghan said.
Nearly 100 more children were wounded, he said.
The children, whom one official said were from the same school, had gathered to welcome a visiting delegation of parliamentarians to a sugar factory outside the town of Pul-i-Khumri, about 150 kilometers north of Kabul.
The Taliban, who have vowed to step up a campaign of suicide attacks in Afghanistan as part of an extremist insurgency launched after they were ousted from power six years ago, have denied involvement in the blast.
They have also warned they would spread their attacks in the relatively calm north, where a Norwegian soldier died Thursday after being struck by a bomb in an attack also blamed on the Taliban.
Five of the parliamentarians killed Thursday and five bodyguards were buried in a state funeral in Kabul on Thursday attended by 2,500 people and 1,000 police and soldiers.
President Hamid Karzai, who declared three days of mourning starting Wednesday, and members of his government and the parliament attended a prayer service at Kabul's mosque Friday in honour of the dead.
Education Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar has, in the wake of the devastating blast, reissued a ban on children being assembled to welcome visitors to functions, his spokesman said.
"After this attack, the minister has ordered again that no-one can force any student to participate in those kind of ceremonies any more," he said.
Special prayer services would be held in Kabul and all provinces in the next few days to remember the children and teachers, the spokesman said.
The toll from the blast has been difficult to pin down with various officials issuing different numbers.
A health ministry official in Kabul, Ahmad Shah Shokohmand, said earlier Friday that 64 people were killed, four of whom had died in hospital from their wounds.
Meanwhile, Baghlan province Abdul Rahman Sayedkhili said a suspect had been arrested at the site of the blast, a day after the bombing, because he was behaving suspiciously.
The insurgency being waged by the Taliban and other extremist outfits has gained steam since it was launched in the months after the hardliners were driven from government in 2001 by a US-led force.
More than 5,500 people have been killed so far this year — most of them rebels.
Officials announced Friday they had retaken two remote districts that had been under the control of Taliban rebels for several days.
Ten rebels were killed in the fighting to take one district, Gulistan in the western province of Farah, provincial police chief Abdul Rahman Sarjang said. In other violence, Taliban militants gunned down a district chief in the southern province of Zabul late Thursday, along with two of his bodyguards, police said.
(AFP)
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