Nine Afghan soldiers killed in bombing
(AP)
Updated: 2005-09-29 08:58

A suicide attacker on a motorbike detonated a bomb Wednesday outside an Afghan military training center in Kabul, killing nine soldiers and wounding 28 other people, the Defense Ministry said.

The attacker struck in a parking lot where officers and soldiers of the Afghan National Army were waiting to take minibuses home at about 4 p.m. A purported Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility and threatened more suicide attacks.

It was the deadliest bombing in the Afghan capital in at least a year and breaks 10 days of calm after landmark parliamentary elections. Those polls were relatively peaceful despite Taliban threats of violence.

The U.S.-trained Afghan National Army is a key plank of international efforts to rebuild the country after decades of war and factional strife.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack in "the strongest terms" as he ordered an investigation.

The commander of the training center, Gen. Ghulam Saki, said the bomber killed nine army personnel. The 28 people treated in a military hospital included three civilians.

Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammed Zaher Azimi said the attack appeared to be the work of a suicide bomber. He blamed "international terrorists" but did not elaborate.

Suicide attacks are far less frequent in Afghanistan than in Iraq.

Khail Mohammed, an Afghan soldier who witnessed the attack, said a uniformed man on a motorbike, believed to be the attacker, drove into the parking lot of the Kabul Military Training Center on the Jalalabad Road in the city's eastern section as the buses were preparing to leave.

"I saw the bodies of badly mutilated soldiers and the buses were on fire," he said.

Norwegian soldiers close a road after a suicide attack in the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan, Wednesday Sept. 28, 2005. [AP]

In the aftermath, an Associated Press reporter saw three blackened, badly damaged minibuses, one lying on its side. Investigators examined the blast site under mobile floodlights, while NATO peacekeepers searched nearby woods with flashlights.

NATO troops, U.S. soldiers and Afghan police blocked roads to the area.

In a call to The Associated Press nearly five hours after the attack, purported Taliban spokesman Mullah Latif Hakimi said the bomber was an Afghan Taliban known as Mullah Sardar Mohammed.

Hakimi's account of the attack seemed at odds with witness accounts. He claimed the attacker struck at the headquarters of the Afghan army as foreign instructors were training Afghan cadets.

He said other Taliban fighters were ready to launch suicide attacks on U.S.-led coalition and Afghan government forces.

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