Bomb rips through bus, 3 German troops die in Kabul

By SAYED SALAHUDDIN

KABUL - A suspected suicide bomber in a car blew up a bus carrying German peacekeepers in the Afghan capital Kabul on Saturday, killing at least three soldiers and injuring 30 people, including some passers-by, officials said.

Witnesses at the scene of the blast, the first deadly attack on the 5000-strong International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), said they saw the mangled wreckage of the car carrying the explosives and bloodstains and shards of glass on the road.

"It was a deliberate attack from a passing car," said ISAF spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Kolken. "We can confirm three dead and several wounded," he told Reuters.

ISAF troops were at the scene shortly after the explosion at around 8.00am (3.30pm NZT) and cordoned off the area.

ISAF medical staff worked frantically to extract victims from the bus and a helicopter landed nearby to transfer the wounded to an ISAF-run hospital.

A German Defence Ministry spokesman in Berlin said that as well as the three soldiers on board who died, around 30 people were wounded, including 10 who suffered serious injuries. Some of the wounded were pedestrians.

The incident was the latest in a string of attacks in Afghanistan aimed at US-led coalition forces, international peacekeepers and aid agencies.

One Afghan police official, who put the death toll at five, said it was too early to say who was behind the attack.

However, in previous cases in recent months they have blamed remnants of the ousted Taleban regime and the al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden, suspected of masterminding the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.

Saturday's explosion was the second violent incident involving German peacekeepers in Kabul in the past two weeks.

On May 29, one German soldier was killed and another wounded when their vehicle hit a landmine near Kabul, although officials blamed an old landmine rather than a deliberate act of sabotage.

ISAF has around 5000 troops stationed in Kabul, with the force currently led by Germany and the Netherlands.

At least 14 German peacekeepers have now died in Afghanistan, mostly in non-hostile acts.

Late last month, 62 Spanish peacekeepers returning from Afghanistan were among 75 people killed when their charter plane crashed into a mountain in Turkey.

Two Norwegian officers were wounded during an ambush by a gunman last month in a village to the north of the capital.

In late March, a rocket fell inside the ISAF headquarters in Kabul but caused no injuries. Earlier the same month, an Afghan interpreter for ISAF was killed and a Dutch soldier wounded when a home-made bomb was thrown into their car in Kabul.

ISAF has been based in Kabul since President Hamid Karzai's government took over in late 2001 after US-led coalition forces toppled the Taleban.

Karzai, who returned to Afghanistan from a trip to Britain just hours after the attack, told an audience in Oxford late on Friday that were ISAF to leave the country, it would be "in hell", underlining the lack of security.

On Friday, a Taleban commander said the group's leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, had ordered his forces to regroup and take revenge for the killing of his fighters in a battle this week.

Afghan officials said up to 40 Taleban fighters died in a battle on Wednesday in what they described as the Taleban's biggest defeat since late 2001.

About 11,500 foreign troops are in Afghanistan searching for remnants of the Taleban and al Qaeda.

- REUTERS