A Taleban suicide bomber succeeded in killing one of Afghanistan’s most senior spymasters as well as 23 other people today when he blew himself up in a crowd leaving a mosque, officials said.
The attack demonstrated the Taleban’s ability to hit out at senior Afghan security officials. It also casts a shadow over British and Americans hopes to build up the country’s security forces to a point where they can handle the insurgency alone, allowing Nato troops to be reduced.
In the tense situation that has followed Afghanistan’s fraud-tainted elections, the explosion also has the potential to feed into rising ethnic tensions: Abdullah Laghmani, the murdered deputy head of the National Directorate for security, was a Pashtun, while his surviving boss is a member of the Tajik community.
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The main Tajik presidential candidate, Abdullah Abdullah, has accused the Pashtun president, Hamid Karzai, of engineering massive vote-rigging to stay in power, and one of his campaign managers warned of potential violence if the alleged fraud went unchallenged.
The attack came as the Independent Election Commission in Kabul released a new tranche of partial results that showed Mr Karzai’s lead creeping towards the crucial 50 per cent threshold that would allow him to declare outright victory and avoid a second round run-off against Mr Abdullah. The results, accounting for 60 per cent of the vote, showed Mr Karzai had won 47.3 per cent of it while Mr Abdullah was trailing with just under 33 per cent.
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The deadly blast occurred in Mehtarlam, the capital of Laghman province 60 miles to the east of the capital, which had been relatively quiet in the past.
Witnesses said the suicide bomber mingled with a crowd of people gathering to greet the minister as he left a celebration marking the inauguration of a new mosque.
“I saw people coming out of the mosque and some of them were getting into their vehicles. I didn’t know them. Then the explosion happened. I was wounded. When I opened my eyes I was in hospital,” said one witness.
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The explosion killed 24 people, officials said, and wounded more than 50, as well as destroying cars parked nearby. Among the dead was the head of the provincial council, as well as several other senior officials.
Mr Laghmani had previously been the intelligence chief in Kandahar, a former Taleban stronghold where Pashtun Islamists are still powerful. Before the US invasion of Afghanistan eight years ago, he fought with a Tajik-led faction against the Taleban.
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The bombing was a serious blow to Afghanistan’s Western-backed intelligence service, which is supposed to hunting down Taleban insurgents who have been waging deadly guerrilla warfare mainly in the south and east of the country. The suicide attack came just days after Taleban fighters kidnapped an intelligence officer in the northern province of Kunduz. His body was found hanged from a tree on the outskirts of the city of Baghlan yesterday, officials said.
The Taleban failed to prevent the August 20 election, but their threats to kill voters meant turnout was low in much of the south and east.
The election has been severely undermined by accusations of widespread and systematic fraud, much of it allegedly perpetrated by Mr Karzai’s camp.
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In the north of the country, Mr Abdullah’s regional campaign chief cautioned that if the allegations of massive ballot stuffing are not properly addressed, violence could erupt, despite pledges by the former foreign minister to restrict any protests to legal, peaceful means.
Zalmai Younosi told supporters in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif: “We are not talking too much because people are very angry and we don’t want to add to that, but Dr. Abdullah is meeting with foreign embassies and regional partners to try to find a solution.
“After that, if there is no result, then it is protest and violence. Yes, violence is bad for the country ... When Russia occupied Afghanistan, we had to fight. When the Taleban came we had to fight back. How can we accept a corrupt government funded by drugs and not respected by the world? We have to defend our own rights.”