Kabul: Twin blasts at Afghan shrines on the Shiite holy day of Ashura left at least 34 people dead in Kabul and the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif here on Tuesday, according to police. A massive blast at the entrance to a shrine in central Kabul where Shiite Muslims had gathered to mark Ashura left at least 30 people dead including children, an AFP photographer saw.
"A suicide bomber detonated his explosives in the Abu-Ul Fazil shrine," Kabul police said in a statement. A security official speaking on condition of anonymity told AFP that it was believed the bomber arrived with a group of Shiite pilgrims from Logar province, south of Kabul. Separately, four people were killed in Mazar-i-Sharif when another blast struck a shrine in the northern city. It was not immediately clear whether Shiites were targeted in that attack.
"It was an explosion not a suicide bombing. It was some explosives hidden in a bicycle," said Lal Mohammad Ahmadzai, a police spokesman for northern Afghanistan, adding that four other people had also been injured. Shiites were banned from marking Ashura in public under the Taliban who ruled Afghanistan until 2001. This year, there are more Ashura monuments around the city than usual including black shrines and flags.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for either of the blasts from the Taliban or other insurgent groups operating in Afghanistan. The attacks came shortly after a major conference on
Afghanistan's future, held in the German city of Bonn, 10 years after talks there which put in place an interim government after US-led troops ousted the Taliban.(AFP)