Afghan deputy governor killed in mosque blast
A suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowded mosque in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province yesterday, killing its deputy governor and five other people, officials said.
Taliban militants said they carried out the deadly attack -- and the official killed had been their prime target.
The suicide bomb tore through the main mosque in Lashkar Gah, the capital of the opium-producing and insurgency-wracked province, after men had gathered for afternoon prayers, police said.
The force of the blast blew a hole into the floor of the mosque and shattered its doors and windows. Blood stained the red carpet and parts of the attacker's body were flung into the courtyard.
"When the prayers started at the main mosque of Lashkar Gah... a suicide attacker who had strapped explosives to his body detonated," Helmand province police chief Mohammad Hussain Andiwal said.
"Six people praying, including the deputy provincial governor Haji Pir Mohammad, were martyred and 18 others were wounded," he added.
The wounded included a four-year-old child who had been begging at the entrance of the mosque, he said.
A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahed, said that the attack was carried out by one of the group's men and said it was aimed at the deputy governor.
Mohammad, in his 50s, was a respected and influential figure in the province, which has seen some of the worst of a Taliban-led insurgency and is the hub of Afghanistan's opium and heroin production.
The interior ministry gave the same number of dead and wounded, though did not confirm the Taliban were behind it.
"The bomber was a clear enemy of Islam and a clear enemy of the Afghan people," ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary said. "They are not humans."
The Helmand blast came hours after an early morning suicide bombing in the capital Kabul killed a civilian and wounded at least four other people.
Mujahed said the Taliban had also carried out that attack.
It was aimed at an Afghan National Army (ANA) bus taking staff to work in the city, the defence ministry said.
A civilian in a taxi was killed and a handful of people, including an army officer, were wounded, but the blast missed the bus, officials said.
"The ANA vehicle drove away. In a taxi passing by, one civilian was killed," Bashary told AFP.
Teenager Mohammad Sharif had been sitting in a nearby mosque when he heard the explosion.
"I ran out. Police at the roundabout starting shooting in the air. I saw a man screaming, lying on the road with his bicycle," the 16-year-old said.
The Taliban were also behind a previous deadly attack in the capital, a January 14 assault on the five-star Kabul Serena hotel that killed at least eight people, three of them foreign nationals.
That brazen attack -- which involved suicide blasts, gunfire and grenade explosions -- was the first of its kind in the city and different in style to the Taliban's regular fare of suicide and roadside bombings.
The insurgents usually direct their attacks at military targets and last year carried out several bombings on buses taking either army or police staff to work in the capital. They also target pro-government officials.
In June a suicide bomber boarded a police bus in the heart of Kabul and killed 35 people, many of them trainers at the police academy.
Last year was the deadliest in the insurgency, launched soon after the Taliban's five-year government was ousted in late 2001 in an invasion led by the United States backed by anti-Taliban Afghan movements.
Around 6,000 people were killed, most of them insurgents but also including 1,500 civilians.
US experts warned in separate reports Wednesday that Afghanistan risks becoming a failed state if urgent steps are not taken to tackle deteriorating security and lacklustre reconstruction and governance efforts.
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