Bomb attack on Shia march in Pakistani city of Karachi

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At least 30 people have been killed and dozens injured in a suicide bombing on a Shia Muslim march in the Pakistani city of Karachi, officials say.

The attacker had been walking amidst a procession with tens of thousands of people, said the interior minister.

After the explosion, marchers turned their anger on ambulance workers, security forces and journalists.

Pakistan's security forces have been on high alert as Shia Muslims marked the holy month of Muharram, or Ashura.

Monday was the climax of the holy period, which commemorates the death of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson.

Blood-stained walls

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, which comes amid an upsurge of attacks by Taliban militants in Pakistan.

“ I am hearing people are clashing with police and doctors, that is what terrorists want, to see this city again on fire ”
Mustafa Kamal Karachi Mayor

Karachi has a long history of sectarian violence between Shias and Sunnis.

There have been numerous attacks on such processions across the country over the last few days, says the BBC's Aleem Maqbool.

On Sunday, eight people were killed when a suicide bomber targeted a Shia march in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik blamed Monday's blast on extremists who wanted to destabilise Pakistan.

"Whoever has done this, he cannot be a Muslim. He is worse than an infidel," he told reporters.

Karachi police chief Waseem Ahmed said the severed head of the bomber had been found, reports Reuters news agency.

One survivor, Naseem Raza, told AP news agency: "I saw walls stained with blood and splashed with human flesh. I saw bloodstained people lying here and there."

Fleeing the scene of the blast, another mourner told AFP news agency: "My sister, her husband and children are dead."

The bombing unleashed further pandemonium as angry Shia mourners fired shots in the air.

Smashed ambulances

Rioters torched dozens of shops and vehicles, while members of the security forces who had been guarding the procession were pelted with stones.

TV footage showed smashed police vehicles and ambulances.

Karachi Mayor Mustafa Kamal appealed for calm.

"I am hearing people are clashing with police and doctors. Please do not do that," AP news agency quoted him as saying.

"That is what terrorists are aiming at. They want to see this city again on fire."

Our correspondent says an incident like this was feared by the authorities. Stringent security measures had been put in place across the country over the last month.

Hundreds of civilians have been killed in bomb attacks in recent months as Pakistan's army pursues an offensive against Taliban militants in South Waziristan and surrounding areas.

Pakistan also has a long history of violence between Sunni and Shia Muslims that is estimated to have killed several thousand people in the last three decades alone.

Some radicals in the Sunni majority regard Shias - who make up about 20% of the population - as heretics.

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• Karachi Suicide Bombing Kills 20 (huffingtonpost.com)
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• Suicide bomb targets Shia Muslims in Karachi (guardian.co.uk)
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Suicide blast kills 17, injures 63 in Kabul - Dawn

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KABUL: A suicide car bomber detonated his vehicle outside the Indian Embassy in the bustling centre of the Afghan capital on Thursday, killing 17 people in the second major attack in the city in less than a month.

The blast occurred a day after the war entered its ninth year and as President Barack Obama was deliberating a request by the top commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal for up to 40,000 more troops. Opponents of a troop increase want to shift focus to missile strikes and special operations against al-Qaeda-linked groups in Pakistan.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack – the second against the Indian Embassy in the past two years – and specified that the Indians were the target.

In New Delhi, India’s Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao said the driver of the sport utility vehicle ‘came up to the outer perimeter wall of the embassy in a car loaded with explosives.’ Three Indian paramilitary guards were wounded by shrapnel, Rao said.

Rao did not say who the Indians believed was responsible for the attack, which occurred about 8:30 a.m. along a commercial street that is also home to the Interior Ministry.

However, the Afghan Foreign Ministry said the on Thursday attack ‘was planned and implemented from outside of Afghan borders’ by the same groups responsible for the July 2008 suicide bombing at the Indian Embassy that killed more than 60 people.

The ministry statement made no mention of Pakistan. However, the Afghan government blamed Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence for the 2008 bombing at the Indian Embassy as well as involvement in a string of attacks in the country.

US officials suspected the 2008 embassy bombing and other high profile attacks were carried out by followers of Jalaluddin Haqqani, a long-time Afghan militant leader whose forces are battling US forces in eastern Afghanistan from sanctuaries in the border area of Pakistan.

In Islamabad, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Abdul Basit, condemned Thursday’s bombing.

‘Whenever terrorist activity occurs it should strengthen our resolve to eradicate and eliminate this menace,’ he said. Basit called allegations of a Pakistani role in the Kabul bombing ‘preposterous.’

The Taliban did not say why it targeted the Indian Embassy. India and Pakistan, archrivals since the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent, are competing for influence in Afghanistan among rival ethnic groups. India maintains close ties with the Tajik community, and Pakistan with the Pashtuns, who form the majority of the Taliban.

Thursday’s blast was the deadliest attack in Kabul since Sept. 17, when a suicide bomber killed 16 people, including six Italian soldiers and 10 Afghan civilians, on a road in the centre of the capital.

The Interior Ministry said 15 civilians and two Afghan police officers were killed in Thursday’s blast. At least 76 people were wounded, the ministry said. President Hamid Karzai, the US Embassy and the United Nations mission all condemned the attack.

After months of relative calm, the Afghan capital has been shaken recently by an increasing number of suicide attacks and roadside bombings that began in the run-up to the country’s disputed Aug. 20 election. The attacks usually target international military forces or government installations, but Afghan businesses and civilians are also often killed or injured.

Police sealed off the area after the blast.

The Indian news channel CNN-IBN cited Jayant Prasad, India’s ambassador in Kabul, as saying the blast caused ‘extensive damage to the chancery.’ He said the bomb was so powerful that it blew off some of the embassy’s doors and windows.

The explosion also damaged a line of shops between the embassy and the Interior Ministry, shattering glass and rattling buildings more than a mile away. A huge brown plume of smoke was visible in the air as ambulances raced to the scene and carried away the wounded.

A European police officer assigned as an adviser to the Interior Ministry and an Afghan interpreter were slightly wounded by flying glass, training spokesman Andrea Angeli said.

A 21-year-old Afghan man, who gave his name only as Najibullah, said he had just opened his shop when the explosion went off, knocking him unconscious. When he awoke, he said, he couldn’t see anything because of dust and debris.

‘Dust was everywhere. People were shouting,’ Najibullah said. ‘You couldn’t see their faces because there was so much dust.’

Violence Roils Afghanistan Days Before Election

By CARLOTTA GALL

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban and the Afghan government escalated a war of attrition and propaganda on Tuesday, two days before the presidential election, with the Taliban unleashing suicide bombings and a rocket assault at the presidential palace and the government barring news organizations from reporting on election day violence.

The attacks, aimed at the heart of the capital and the workplace of President Hamid Karzai, provided yet another indication of the insurgents’ determination to keep people away from the polls and undermine Thursday’s election, which has become a critical test for the Afghan government and its foreign backers.

Early Wednesday, gunmen seized control of a bank in downtown Kabul. The police said three were killed in a shootout. Officers at the scene said it was unclear who they were, but said the intensity of the fighting indicated they were more than common robbers.

In recent days the Taliban have issued repeated warnings — the most recent e-mailed to reporters by a spokesman on Monday — that they will attack polling stations and punish those who turn out to cast ballots. The insurgents carried out two suicide car bombings and rocket attacks on the capital over the last two days, to create a sense of fear to keep voters at home.

In the worst of the attacks on Tuesday, at least eight people were killed in a suicide car bombing in Kabul, including a NATO soldier and two Afghans working for the United Nations mission, officials said. More than 50 people were wounded, they said.

Of the rockets that hit Kabul about 7 a.m. Tuesday, one landed on the grounds of the presidential palace, where President Karzai had started work half an hour before, his spokesman said. Another hit a police station. No one was wounded by the rockets, officials said, but the audacity of the attacks demonstrated the power of the Taliban to disrupt and intimidate.

In another attack on Tuesday morning, in the southern province of Oruzgan, a suicide bomber walked up to an Afghan National Army checkpoint and detonated his explosive vest, killing three soldiers and two civilians, according to the provincial police chief, Juma Gul Himat.

The government, meanwhile, has urged people not to be deterred and to come out and vote on Thursday in presidential and provincial council elections.

“Such kind of attacks shows that the enemies want to disrupt the election process, but we ask people to exercise their right of participation in the elections with strong will,” the presidential spokesman, Homayun Hamidzada, said at a news briefing.

“They will try to attack polling stations and intimidate people, but we are working hard in close coordination with ISAF and other international security forces, as well as with the Independent Electoral Commission to maintain security,” he said, referring to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.

Later, the Afghan Foreign Affairs Ministry issued a statement asking all domestic and international news agencies to refrain from reporting any violent attacks between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m. on election day.

The National Security Council had made the decision “in view of the need to ensure the wide participation of the Afghan people in upcoming presidential and provincial council elections, and prevent any election-related terrorist violence,” the statement said.

The government is concerned that a show of force by the Taliban and low turnout will undermine the credibility of the elections. Low turnout, especially in the war-torn south, could affect Mr. Karzai’s results in the election, since the ethnic Pashtuns who populate the south form his base of support.

Yet the Taliban have been stepping up their campaign against the elections. In an e-mailed statement Tuesday, sent by a spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahed, the movement denied that any agreements had been made with the government to allow elections to take place. It described talk of peace deals as a “cunning trick” by the government and foreign forces.

The intimidation campaign seemed to be working. Local television stations were reporting Tuesday that shop owners in Kabul and in the eastern city of Khost were already closing their shops in fear of attacks or other violence over the elections.

The toll from the suicide bombing in Kabul was also high. One witness said he saw a white car race after a British military logistics convoy and explode as it slammed into it.

“Suddenly we heard a very loud bomb, and a big cloud of dust rose from where the attack happened,” said Ghulam Muhammad, 22, who saw the car from his vegetable store. “The explosion was huge, and I could see many people lying on the road.”

Seven Afghan civilians were killed and 51 were wounded, all civilians, the head of the police criminal investigation department, Sayed Abdul Ghafar, said at the scene. Eighteen cars were set on fire by the explosion and shops and stalls were damaged, he said.

The attack occurred just off the main road leading east out of the capital to Jalalabad. A statement from the international security forces said one foreign soldier was killed and two others were wounded in the attack. A statement from Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry said 7 civilians were killed and 53 wounded.

The United Nations confirmed that two of its Afghan staff members were among those killed.

Shortly before the explosion, NATO-led forces said they would suspend offensive operations on election day, and instead deploy coalition and Afghan troops to protect voters, election monitors and polling stations.

“In support of the Afghan National Security Forces who lead the security efforts during the electoral process, only those operations that are deemed necessary to protect the population will be conducted on that day,” they said in a statement.

Sangar Rahimi and Ruhullah Khapalwak contributed reporting from Kabul. Taimoor Shah contributed reporting from Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Afghan Road Project Shows Bumps in Drive for Stability

By PETER WONACOTT

GHORMACH DISTRICT, Afghanistan -- Khalid Khan's small construction firm was supposed to build a road here that would open his strife-scarred land to commerce and improve its prospects for peace. Instead he wound up in the hands of the Taliban, hanging upside down.

On an April evening, says Mr. Khan, about 20 armed militants broke into his home and marched him and 14 of his employees to a remote village. The 30-year-old contractor says he was accused of helping the Americans and shoved into a well waist-deep with water. At other times during his two-month captivity he was chained to a roof by his feet. Ultimately, relatives raised a $100,000 ransom.

"I lost my money, my health," says Mr. Khan, who estimates he shed more than 60 pounds in captivity. "I lost everything for this project."

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Kate Brooks for The Wall Street Journal

Construction workers on the Shomali Plains paved a road that links to the ring road.

The project in question: paving 3.7 miles over a dusty donkey trail traversing the wheat fields and parched riverbeds of impoverished northwest Afghanistan. It's a tiny piece of a 1,925-mile rim of asphalt -- called the national ring road -- that aims to connect Afghanistan's cities.

The highway has become a litmus test of President Hamid Karzai's ability to govern the country. The final links of the $2.5 billion project -- or roughly 10% of the total length -- are being held up in part by the Taliban's attacks on construction sites and workers. In the face of a hardened insurgency, Mr. Karzai has struggled to show he can build and defend the infrastructure needed for a viable state.

Ramazan Bashardost, a popular candidate who runs his campaign out of a nomad's tent, may force Afghan elections into a second round. Courtesy of Reuters.

"The government of Afghanistan needs to demonstrate it can have a road network and can keep it open. The insurgents recognize that and are working against it," says Brig. Gen. Frank McKenzie, a staff member for Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. The ring road, adds Gen. McKenzie, "is a symbol of governance."

The attacks on the road, including bombings, kidnappings and drive-by shootings, reflect broader security woes underlying Afghanistan's shaky transition to democratic rule ahead of the Aug. 20 national election, which Mr. Karzai is favored to win. According to internal government estimates, about 14% of the country's polling stations are considered too dangerous for people to vote.

A reminder of the volatile situation came Saturday morning, as a Taliban suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden car near the heavily fortified headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's Afghanistan task force in Kabul. The bomb killed at least seven people.

One of Mr. Karzai's challengers, Ashraf Ghani, a former finance minister, says if it had been completed earlier, the national ring road could have been a potent counterinsurgency weapon -- by generating trade, employment and support for the government. Instead, says Mr. Ghani, "it's become a road of broken promises."

Project backers say insurgents have stepped up attacks on the road to sow discord between foreign donors, who are mostly funding construction, and Afghan officials, who are responsible for the police guarding the road.

"We are eager to work in places where we don't get shot at," says Craig Steffensen, country chief for the Asian Development Bank, the single largest donor for Afghanistan's ring road. "We aren't eager to work in places where we aren't sure we can go home the next day."

Since the 1960's, Afghan planners have dreamed of a ring road to transport the country out of poverty. A highway system encircling the poor and landlocked nation could help farmers, factories and the country's resource-rich mines get goods to the market. It could ultimately position Afghanistan as a bridge between its Central Asian neighbors and the big markets of Iran, India and China. That would make trade in copper, coal, oil and gas, as well as fruits, nuts and wheat, viable alternatives to opium, now the country's biggest export.

Yet three decades of war prevented that dream from being realized. It wasn't until after the 2001 U.S.-led overthrow of the Taliban regime that the country mustered the money from foreign donors and expertise to refurbish the parts that had been built and finish the rest. The U.S. government, whose aid arm estimates that two-thirds of Afghanistan live within 31 miles of the road, pumped $492 million into rehabilitating the southern arch from Kabul in the east to Herat in the west. The ADB has contributed an additional $900 million.

Construction came with heavy costs. Between 2003 and early 2008, 162 contractors lost their lives building the southern half of the highway's ring, according to a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog that has studied the U.S. Agency for International Development's projects in Afghanistan. The report didn't specify how the workers were killed, only that the death toll made it the most dangerous of any other USAID-funded project in the country.

Parts of the road have had to be rebuilt after they were completed. In May, USAID announced it had rebuilt a strip between Kabul and Kandahar that had been "mined, bombed and pockmarked by neglect." The section, which goes through the heart of Taliban territory, remains one of the most dangerous in Afghanistan to drive.

The northern half of the ring has proved just as perilous and costly. The ADB says it has confronted repeated security-related delays and cost overruns. After a string of kidnappings and killings, the bank recently agreed to pay an additional $2.5 million to train and dispatch nearly 500 police to guard road crews.

Top Afghan officials maintain security is good enough for the road to speed ahead. In an interview, the minister of finance, Hazrat Omar Zakhilwal, blamed a contractor, China Railway Shisiju Group Corp., for the two stalled sections in north Faryab Province.

"We need to apply pressure on the Chinese," said Mr. Zakhilwal, who is also the chief economic adviser to the president. "They are going awfully slow."

In an indication of the security woes bedeviling the roadways, Mr. Zakhilwal arrived at the interview late -- after the Taliban blew up an oil tanker ahead of him, he says, and fired down from a mountain at his convoy. The finance minister dismissed the attack with a wave of the hand.

China Rail executives didn't respond to faxed and emailed questions about the status of the ring road or the April kidnapping of its contractor, Mr. Khan. In 2004, China Rail lost 11 employees in a late-night attack on its compound in northeastern Kunduz Province. The company has estimated that it's been targeted in 10 other terrorist attacks.

The ring road's potential benefits are on display in Maimana, the capital of Faryab. With a new portion of the road from the east connecting the town with the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, goods have poured in from abroad: shampoos from Iran, soap from Ukraine, rice from India and knockoff British perfumes made in China.

Fruit prices have fallen by half from a year ago, say merchants, mainly due to a drop in transport costs. Mullah Mohammed Latif, a Maimana vegetable salesman, says he used to take at least four days to make the round trip by truck to Mazar-e-Sharif. En route, he says, he would lose large amounts of his melons and grapes to the sun and the hands of hungry thieves. Now he hires a taxi to do the trip in a day.

The brisk produce sales have filtered down to farmers in the area, so that local stall owners are now adjusting to a novel phenomenon: disposable income. "People are coming to Maimana to spend money," exalts Sakhi Mohammed, sitting inside a roadside store selling Chinese-made electric kettles and children's clothing.

The road going west from Maimana, skirting the border of Turkmenistan, is a different story. Much of it remains unpaved and construction on the China Rail sections has slowed to a standstill.

In July, Mr. Steffensen, the ADB's 51-year-old country chief, led a small team to the China Rail compound in the town of Qaisar to try to kick-start construction. An armored convoy of Norwegian troops escorted the team past the rusted carcasses of Soviet tanks, the relics of an earlier war.

At the Chinese camp, the ADB team sat around a conference table with the China Rail executives. In the middle: a map showing the project's torpid progress.

Chen Zhe, a China Rail manager, said his company underestimated costs and the level of security needed. He said the road sections that were supposed to be finished by the end of last year are only 20% complete.

Mr. Steffensen said top Afghan officials were angry as they watched the nearby South Korean crew working feverishly and not China Rail. ADB was now paying $50,000 a week for the extra Afghan police, he said, apparently to guard idle construction equipment. Build the road and worry about money later, advised Mr. Steffenson. "Everybody wants to see action, big action," he said. "We need to haul a -- ."

Mr. Chen cleared his throat. "We will try our best to finish this project," he said.

Mr. Khan's kidnapping had been a major setback. The crew's abduction stalled a crucial 3.7-mile stretch in Ghormach district, roughly 70 miles from Maimana, and sent shivers of anxiety through the entire project team. Barricaded in their compounds, Chinese executives complained they could hear gunshots at night.

In Ghormach, Mr. Khan said, he had been living in a house next to a police checkpoint, but the Taliban were able to move into his house and then march his crew into the hills without a shot being fired.

Asked about the lack of police response, Abdul Khalil Andarabi, Faryab's police chief, said investigators later found that the kidnappers had help from inside the police force. He says the police arrested two suspects as well as some relatives of the kidnappers.

In interviews, Mr. Khan recounted his two-month ordeal, the broad outlines of which were confirmed by the ADB, the China Rail team and Muhammad Ajmal Jami, an engineer who was also kidnapped. Mr. Khan says he knew he was a ripe target -- reviled for working on a foreign-backed project and seen as rich enough to afford a big ransom. Yet he says he almost fooled his captors into releasing him. He told them his name was Abdullah and that he drove a gravel truck. They initially demanded a relatively paltry $8,000 ransom.

But just before his uncle arrived with the money, the Taliban discovered Mr. Khan's real identity. He says they took the $8,000 and then asked for $300,000 more. Mr. Khan was forced into the well. After 10 days, Mr. Khan says, the Taliban chained him up by his feet to the roof. When he asked for water, they poured it down his throat, choking him.

Mr. Khan was later marched to a spot where another engineer had been executed. He was told to say his final prayer and then someone fired a shot at the ground between his legs. Another evening, he knelt down in the same spot and felt a bullet pass his cheek. Both times, he was ordered to call his mother afterward and plead to hurry up with the money.

Mr. Khan recalls his mind going numb. "Because I worked for the Americans," he remembers the young men telling him, "Islamic law permitted them to kill me."

The Taliban eventually reduced the ransom to $100,000 and a Toyota Land Cruiser. Borrowing from friends and family, Mr. Khan's uncle handed over the cash and the car in June.

His problems weren't over after the release. Hoping to extract another $100,000, the Taliban has held onto another of his engineers.

Despite the dangers, Mr. Khan's team has resumed construction near the site of their kidnapping. Mr. Khan himself remains in Kabul, wavering over whether to return to the site, or leave the country. Even in Kabul, he says, he fears he is a target.

"It's not difficult to shoot me or send a suicide bomber to Kabul," says Mr. Khan. "There are still plenty of Taliban here."

—Habib Zahori, Anand Gopal and Sue Feng contributed to this article.

Write to Peter Wonacott at peter.wonacott@wsj.com

Bombing in Kabul's Diplomatic Quarter Signals Taliban Intent to Disrupt Election

By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 16, 2009

KABUL, Aug. 15 -- A suicide car bombing outside the U.S. military headquarters in Afghanistan's capital Saturday was the most serious indication yet of the Taliban's designs to disrupt Thursday's presidential election through violence.

The Islamist militia, which is fighting NATO and Afghan forces for control in wide swaths of the country, has fired rockets into Kabul in recent days, but the attack Saturday was the most brutal in the heart of the capital in six months. At least seven Afghans were killed, and more than 90 people were wounded.

If such violence succeeds in scaring voters away from the polls, Afghanistan faces a serious long-term problem. A low turnout, particularly in Taliban strongholds in the south, could cast doubts on the legitimacy of the election results.

"It is the Taliban who are trying to deny Afghans their political rights," said a senior U.S. official in Afghanistan, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "That's a lesson that ought to come home to all of us."

President Hamid Karzai, the front-runner in the election, said in a statement that the attack was an attempt by the nation's enemies to "create fear among the people." But he added that Afghans "are not afraid of any threats, and they will go to cast their votes."

Guarding voting sites and securing roads to the polling places has become the top priority for NATO forces. Of the 17 million registered voters, a turnout of more than 50 percent would be considered high, some U.S. officials say. In recent days, American military officials have received intelligence reports warning of suicide bombings and other catastrophic Taliban attacks, as well as quieter acts of intimidation. Insurgents issued similar threats of violence, and carried out some of them, ahead of elections in Iraq.

"Letters at night, threats and that sort of thing to try to dissuade people from going to the polls," the senior U.S. official said. "My impression is frankly there's much more in the way of intimidation than actual violence."

In the heated environment of the campaign's final days, the bombing became a political issue, with Karzai's rivals arguing that he is responsible for the escalating violence in the country.

"I'm absolutely sure that we cannot bring peace in Afghanistan when the criminals of war are in power in Afghanistan," said Ramazan Bashardost, a presidential candidate. "I believe the Taliban war is not against American or British troops as much as it is a war against the Taliban enemy, which means" Karzai.

The Taliban quickly asserted responsibility for Saturday's car bombing at the security checkpoint outside the diplomatic compound that houses the U.S. and NATO military headquarters and the U.S. Embassy. Reached by telephone, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said a fighter named Ahmed detonated his four-wheel-drive vehicle carrying more than 1,000 pounds of explosives in order to kill Americans and disrupt the election, which he described as an "American process."

The bombing occurred at 8:30 a.m. about 30 yards from the main compound entrance on a heavily guarded street. The explosion blew a hole in the road, crumbled concrete walls and shattered windows of buildings hundreds of yards away. The less-fortified row of buildings opposite the compound sustained the greatest damage, including the office of the Afghan Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation and the government television and radio station.

Mohammad Rafi, 22, a cook at Super Burger, was preparing a salad when the explosion shattered the plate glass window of his restaurant. He fell to the floor as shards rained down.

"Only God knows why they did this. I pray that God destroys them," Rafi said. "We just hate the suicide bombers."

Diplomats said that windows were shattered inside the compound but that damage was relatively light, with barriers mitigating much of the force of the blast. Indian ambassador Jayant Prasad wandered out of the compound surrounded by guards and said the windows of his residence and those of the Spanish ambassador's were blown out.

Western military spokesmen said that "several" international troops were injured but that none was killed. One U.S. military official said it appeared that no Americans were seriously injured.

Many of the wounded Afghans were taken to a nearby hospital. Raz Muhammad Alami, the technical and operations deputy minister at the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation, said 57 people from his ministry were injured, 36 seriously.

In the crowded recovery room for women, bombing victims moaned in pain and some appeared unconscious. One ministry employee, Freshata Nazami, 21, said she was walking along a window-lined hallway and fell to the floor when the blast occurred. "It was such a disastrous day," she said from her hospital bed, with dried blood spots on her face and shirt. "My head was injured. I was running to the basement. When I got to the basement, I lost consciousness."

"All our friends and colleagues were injured, and I don't know where they are," she said.

Officials said they expect more pre-election violence. The bombing prompted the United Nations to restrict movement of its personnel in Kabul, but the measures were lifted by the end of the day.

"Incidents like this were probably to some extent expected, although you can never predict where they will happen," said Adrian Edwards, a U.N. spokesman in Afghanistan. "This is probably one of the most complex elections attempted anywhere, and, unfortunately, insecurity is part of that complexity."

Special correspondent Javed Hamdard contributed to this report.

Minority Groups Targeted Again in Iraqi Suicide Bombings

By Ernesto Londoño and Dlovan Brwari
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, August 14, 2009

BAGHDAD, Aug. 13 -- Two suicide bombers killed at least 21 people in a cafe in northern Iraq on Thursday, Iraqi officials said, in the latest attack targeting ethnic or religious minorities in disputed territories.

The double bombing occurred about 5 p.m. in the Ayoub coffeehouse in Sinjar, a town about 240 miles northwest of Baghdad. Most of the victims were Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking religious minority. At least 30 people were wounded.

The attack, like other recent bombings, appeared intended to exacerbate tensions along a 300-mile stretch of disputed territory near the Kurdish north, pitting the Kurdish autonomous government against Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's administration in Baghdad.

Although Sinjar is nominally part of Nineveh province, one of the three Iraqi provinces that border the Kurdish-controlled area, it is patrolled by the pesh merga, the Kurdish government's paramilitary force.

Nineveh's newly installed governor, Atheel al-Nujaifi, a Sunni Arab, campaigned on a promise to curb Kurdish expansion and has said he wants a military force in the province that is under his command. The mayor of Sinjar, Dakhil Qassim Hassoun, is close to the Kurdish government and has strained ties with Nujaifi.

Pesh merga units have come close to armed conflict with Iraqi army troops in recent months, as Maliki has sent additional soldiers loyal to the Baghdad government to areas that the Kurdish force has controlled in recent years.

With the U.S. military reducing its presence in Iraqi cities in recent weeks, insurgents have carried out several mass-casualty attacks in northern Iraq targeting members of ethnic and religious minorities.

On Monday, twin car bombs near Mosul leveled several houses in a village and killed at least 35 people, most of them members of the Shabak religious minority. That village was also under pesh merga control. Last Friday, more than 40 people, most of them Shiite Turkmens, were killed in Mosul after a car bomb detonated outside a mosque. More than 150 people have been killed in violent incidents in Iraq since Friday, according to a tally by the Associated Press.

Maj. Gen. Robert L. Caslen Jr., the top U.S. commander in northern Iraq, said at a recent news conference that Sunni insurgents remain "a resilient force that has the capability to regenerate their combat power."

Residents said the cafe attacked Thursday is on the outskirts of Sinjar, in a scenic spot frequented by young people.

"This coffee shop is located on a farm that people visit in the summer to watch the sun set," said Saad Sabri, 25, a pharmacist.

In August 2007, Sinjar was the site of the deadliest string of attacks in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion when about 400 people, mostly Yazidis, were killed in a series of powerful explosions.

Special correspondent Zaid Sabah contributed to this report.

Suicide Blast Wounds 2 at Embassy in Mauritania

By ADAM NOSSITER

DAKAR, Senegal — A suicide bomber blew himself up outside the French Embassy in Mauritania’s capital on Saturday night, slightly wounding two embassy security guards who were jogging near the walls.

“Someone approached them and blew himself up,” a spokesman for the French Embassy, Marc Flattot, said in a telephone interview from the capital, Nouakchott.

“It wasn’t a big explosion,” he said.

“There were a number of light wounds. They were shocked,” he said of the security guards, who were hospitalized for observation.

“No doubt they had been spotted,” Mr. Flattot said.

Mauritania is a large Islamic country of mostly desert that has suffered a number of attacks attributed to a North African militant group affiliated with Al Qaeda, including the killing of an American in June.

But there had not been a suicide bombing on record, and analysts and diplomats in Nouakchott considered Saturday’s attack an escalation of terrorist activities in a land whose vast, unpatrolled northern frontiers have become a cause of concern to counterterrorism officials.

“They’re clearly becoming more active,” a Western diplomat in Nouakchott said of the militant group, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. “It’s the first time we’ve seen them do it here.”

The diplomat cautioned, though, that Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb had previously shown its ability to bring militants into Mauritania from neighboring Mali.

Now, the diplomat said, “It’s perhaps more focused.”

On Saturday night, a Mauritanian Web site said to be close to the government, the Agence Nouakchott d’Information, reported that the suicide bomber was a Mauritanian.

It said the bomber cried “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great,” before blowing himself up as he approached the two Frenchmen.

The police told Agence France-Presse that the suspect was a jihadist who had been sought by security officials.

No responsibility for the bombing was claimed Saturday night.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb previously declared itself responsible for the shooting of the American, Christopher Leggett, six weeks ago on a street in Nouakchott. Saturday’s attack, unlike the shooting, took place in the heart of the capital’s diplomatic and upper-end residential district, Tevragh Zeina.

Three Mauritanians were charged with murder last week in Mr. Leggett’s death; one was wearing an explosives belt that did not detonate when he was arrested in July.

Three others, accused of close ties to Al Qaeda, are in custody in the killing of four French tourists in Mauritania in 2007.

Also in July, one of the Qaeda branch’s leaders threatened war against France over President Nicolas Sarkozy’s declarations against the burqa, the head-to-toe covering worn by some Muslim women.

France is the former colonial power in Mauritania and provides millions of dollars in aid each year.

Earlier last week, Mauritania’s newly elected president, the former coup leader and general Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, declared at his inauguration that he would “spare no effort in the fight against terrorism and its causes.”

Mauritania is considered to be a country of moderate Islam; the Islamist candidate in the recent presidential elections got little support.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb recently carried out attacks in the desert in the neighboring country of Mali, including an encounter with a Malian Army patrol and the killing of a senior Malian Army officer in his home.

“This is the logical follow-up to the recent encounters in the north of Mali,” said Isselmou Ould Moustapha, the editor of Tahalil Hebdo, a newspaper in Nouakchott.

Steven Erlanger contributed reporting from Paris.

6 Killed in Attack at Chechen Theater

By ANDREW E. KRAMER

MOSCOW — Six people were killed in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, on Sunday when a suicide bomber detonated explosives outside a theater as a crowd gathered for a performance. The bombing was the second in the city this month.

Police officers had stopped the man a dozen or so yards from the theater’s entrance, news agencies reported, preventing him from entering a hall packed with about 1,000 people where he might have caused many more casualties. Instead, the man exploded his explosives beside benches and a fountain in front of the theater.

Russian state television showed police tape cordoning off the square and ambulances leaving the area. Ten people were wounded, television news reported. The powerful blast rattled windows blocks away.

Four of the dead were police officers, including the director of security for public events in Grozny, the Russian Information Agency reported. Another was a Turkish construction worker described as a bystander, and the sixth a citizen of Georgia who died in a hospital later on Sunday.

Another Georgian citizen was wounded, the news agency reported. It said the bomber’s remains were too damaged to be identified immediately.

On July 7, a bomb hidden in an urn on a Grozny street exploded, wounding nine people.

Russia is fighting a low-grade insurgency in Chechnya, a region in the Caucasus Mountains the size of Connecticut, where rights groups say police abuse is as much of a problem as militant attacks.

Two weeks ago, Natalia Estemirova, a researcher for the human rights group Memorial, was abducted in Grozny and her body later found on the side of a road. Memorial accused the region’s president, Ramzan A. Kadyrov, of involvement in her killing; Mr. Kadyrov has sued the group for slander.

In other violence in the region on Sunday, police officers in Grozny killed a man in a shootout who was described as a rebel. In the neighboring region of Ingushetia, four men died when the car they were riding in exploded. The regional Interior Ministry said they were militants transporting a makeshift bomb, The Associated Press reported.

Violent attacks have increased in the North Caucasus recently. In June, a suicide car bomber critically wounded the president of Ingushetia, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, by colliding with his motorcade on a highway.

After the explosion on Sunday, Mr. Kadyrov, the president of Chechnya, said it was an effort by militants to halt a military operation under way in the mountains between Chechnya and Ingushetia that was begun in response to the attack on Mr. Yevkurov.