Afghan mosque blast kills 20

A suicide bomb attack on the funeral of a leading cleric killed by suspected Taliban militants left at least 20 people dead in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar including one of the country's top policemen, officials and doctors said.

Around 40 people were wounded when the blast ripped through a mosque in the centre of the city, the birthplace of the hardline Islamic Taliban regime that was ousted by US-led forces three and a half years ago.

The yesterday's attack was the worst in Afghanistan this year and one of the most serious since the fall of the Taliban, which gave shelter and support to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network.

It came as prayers were given for Maulvi Abdullah Fayyaz, a close supporter of US-backed President Hamid Karzai, who was gunned down on Sunday after recently speaking out against fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

"We have received 40 wounded and 20 dead bodies in the hospital," Dr Naseer Ahmed Niazi, director of Kanadar's Mirwais hospital, told AFP.

Afghan interior ministry spokesman Lutfullah Mashal told AFP that 16 people including the police chief of the capital Kabul, General Akram Khakraizwall, were killed. The bomber also died.

"It was a suicide attack by the enemies of Afghanistan and Islam. The investigation into the case has started," added Mashal, who had said earlier that more than two dozen people were killed.

A man in a police uniform approached the police chief and bent over pretending to prepare Khakraizwall's shoes, which he had taken off to enter the mosque in line with tradition, said survivor Mohammad Afzal, 35.

"That was when he detonated his bomb. It was a terribly big explosion which killed Khakraizwall and his bodyguards and people around him," the witness told an AFP correspondent at the scene.

"There were some 50 to 60 people inside the mosque when the explosion occurred. This was a very big explosion and there is blood everywhere in the mosque and outside it," the correspondent said.

"Human limbs are scattered all over the mosque compound."

The attack will raise fears that Taliban militants, who continue to wage a guerrilla revolt in southern and eastern Afghanistan, are further stepping up a renewed onslaught which which has left more than 250 people dead this year. Most of those killed have been militants themselves.

The hardliners claimed responsibility after two armed men on a motorcycle on Sunday gunned down cleric Fayyaz, who was chief of Kandahar's Islamic Council.

Fayyaz organized a meeting of other Afghan Islamic clerics in Kandahar last week in which the council of ulemas, or scholars, revoked the title of Amirul Mominine, the leader of all believers, given to Mullah Mohammed Omar.

Two years ago a bomb exploded in the same mosque, which is named after the cleric's father, wounding Fayyaz and 23 others.

Kandahar has been hit by other previous bombings, including twin roadside blasts on March 17 that killed five people and wounded more than 30 while US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Kabul.

On Monday up to 16 militants and four police officers were killed in a series of attacks in southern Afghanistan.

More than 18,000 coalition troops, including about 16,000 US forces, are in Afghanistan hunting Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants.