Kabul, December 07: Twin blasts at Afghan shrines on the Shiite holy day of Ashura killed at least 58 people on Tuesday with one massive suicide attack in Kabul ripping through a crowd of worshippers.
The blast in Kabul and another in the northern city of Mazar- i- Sharif came a day after an international meeting in Germany meant to further efforts to end the Afghan war, 10 years after the US- led forces drove the Taliban from power.
At least 54 people, including children were killed in the huge explosion at the entrance to a riverside shrine in central Kabul, where hundreds of singing Shiite Muslims had gathered to mark ashura, an official said. “ Fifty- four are dead and 150 others injured,” health ministry spokesman Ghulam Sakhi Kargar Noorughli said.
“ Some people around me fell down injured. I wasn’t hurt, so I got up and started running. It was horrible,” he said. Men and women at the scene sobbed as they surveyed the carnage, and screamed slogans denouncing the al- Qaeda and the Taliban.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for either blast.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai said the twin bomb attacks were the first terrorist acts on an important holy day.
Meanwhile, the Taliban issued a statement, condemning the attacks blaming the bombings on the ‘ invading enemy’.
-Agencies