Afghanistan: Bomb kills 19 on way to wedding
An Afghan National Army soldier stands guard at the site of a roadside bomb in Kabul, 03 May 2007. A bomb struck a bus taking Afghan soldiers to work in the capital Kabul killing the driver and wounding 14 people, police said. The bomb was hidden in a cart parked at the side of the road and was remotely detonated as the bus went by, an army officer said. ‘It was a roadside bomb targeting an ANA (Afghan National Army) bus’, the city’s criminal investigation chief Alishah Paktiawal said.
A roadside bomb killed at least 19 people and wounded 16 in northern Afghanistan on Friday.
BBC News reported the victims, all civilians, were on a minibus on their way to a wedding in the Dawlatabad district of Balkh province, north-west of Kabul, when it was hit by a large bomb.
It is not clear whether they were the intended target of the attack, which happened at 6 a.m. local time.
The Washington Post said an AP report quoted district police commander Bismullah Muslimyar detailing that six children and seven women were among those killed. Many of the wounded were in a critical condition and the death toll could rise.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai released a statement, in which he strongly condemned the attack.
“Planting a mine on a road used by civilians and the killing of innocent people represents hostility toward humanity,” he said.
While no one has admitted to the attack, provincial police spokesman Shir Jan Durani told Reuters the Taliban had carried it out.
"They wanted to attend a wedding party in a village … The bomb was planted by the enemies of Afghanistan," Durani said.
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