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KABUL: A suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden car into the Indian embassy in Kabul yesterday, killing 41 people and wounding nearly 150 others in the deadliest attack here since the 2001 fall of the Taleban, officials said. The blast in the heart of the city scattered human flesh and severed limbs in front of the embassy compound, tearing down an outside security office and part of a wall. Charred and bloodied bodies littered a road outside.

The toll of casualties we have so far is 41 martyred and 147 wounded. Among those killed are six policemen," Afghan interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP. Many of the dead were Afghans collecting Indian visas. The Indian embassy's military attache and a political counsellor were killed along with two Indian guards. The body of one of the diplomats was flung onto the roof of the embassy and only found hours later, officials said.

Indian ambassador Jayan Prasad, who was not hurt in the explosion heard across the city centre, told AFP the suicide attacker rammed the diplomats' vehicle as it was entering through the gates of the embassy compound. "The embassy has been blown up badly, the outer structures," another embassy official said on condition of anonymity. "We are walking on rubble.

I saw wounded and dead people everywhere on the road," said Danish Karokhil, the head of the independent Pajhwok news agency, whose offices are close by. The embassy is located on a busy, tree-lined street near Afghanistan's Interior Ministry in the city center. Several nearby shops were damaged or destroyed in the blast, and smoldering ruins covered the street. The explosion rattled much of the Afghan capital. "Several shopkeepers have died. I have seen shopkeepers under the rubble," said Ghulam Dastagir
, a shopkeeper who was wounded in the blast.

Five Afghan security guards and two Indonesian diplomats were hurt at the nearby Indonesian embassy, which was also damaged, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was quoted as saying in Jakarta. The blast was the worst in Kabul since the start of an Islamist insurgency launched after the hardline Taleban were toppled from government by US-led forces for harbouring the Al-Qaeda network after the 9/11 attacks.

The Taleban have carried out a wave of suicide bombings across the country in the past seven years, but a spokesman for the movement denied his group was involved in the Indian embassy attack. "We have not done it," spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed said. The militants have previously denied involvement in attacks with high civilian casualties but authorities often blame them, pointing to their record of suicide bombings.

The Afghan interior ministry said "terrorists" had carried out the attack "in coordination and with advice from regional intelligence circles". Asked if this was a reference to Pakistan, Bashary declined to comment. The Afghan government has repeatedly accused elements in Pakistan's army and its shadowy intelligence service of supporting to Taleban and other extremists for strategic interests. Afghan analysts argue Pakistan is loath to see the emergence of a strong Afghanistan that is friendly to India and
is secretly backing the Taleban as a "strategic asset", enabling Pakistani forces to concentrate on defending the Indian border. Pakistan denies the Afghan accusations and strongly condemned yesterday's attack.
President Hamid Karzai blamed the "enemies" of the good relationship between Afghanistan and India, one of the country's staunchest allies as the war-torn country battles the increasingly bloody Taleban insurgency. He telephoned Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to offer his condolences and said his government would do all it could to find the attackers, his office said in a statement.

India has provided significant support to Afghanistan's efforts to restore order after the ouster of the Islamic extremist Taleban movement, which seized power in 1996. "Such acts of terror will not deter us from fulfilling our commitments to the government and people of Afghanistan," the Indian government said in a statement. The United States and European Union led international condemnation of the blast, pledging to stand by Afghanistan as it battles a growing wave of extremist violence in the region th
at has also seen a wave of deadly attacks in neighbouring Pakistan.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon condemned the blast. "The perpetrators of this attack targeted innocent civilians. The secretary-general reiterates that no political agenda or grievance can justify such reprehensible means. He urges that those responsible be brought to justice," said a spokeswoman for Ban.

The international community has sent about 70,000 troops to Afghanistan to help them fight the militants but the insurgency has only gained pace, notably over the past two years. In other violence yesterday, a Canadian soldier died after being badly hurt in a bomb blast in the southern province of Kandahar, a Canadian commander said. A roadside bomb similar to those used by the Taleban killed three Afghan police in the same province and a separate one killed four more in the neighbouring province of Uruzg
an, government officials said. - Agencies

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