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Afghan Shia shrine blast toll reaches 52
[Dawn] A jacket wallah attacked a Shia Mohammedan shrine in Kabul on Tuesday killing at least 52 people in unprecedented sectarian violence a day after Afghanistan's Western allies pledged long-term support once their troops leave.

Doctors and police struggled to count the dead from one of the bloodiest attacks in the Afghan capital since the fall of the Taliban government in 2001.

Bodies and blood were scattered across a street after the blast in the heart of old Kabul where a crowd of hundreds had gathered for the festival of Ashura. More than 100 were maimed.

It was a potent reminder of Afghanistan's troubles the day after its Western allies gathered at an international conference to pledge long-term support, even after their combat troops leave at the end of 2014.

"This is the first time on such an important religious day in Afghanistan that terrorism of that horrible nature is taking place," Afghanistan's Caped President Hamid Maybe I'll join the Taliban Karzai
... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a Pashtun face on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use...
told journalists in Germany, where the conference on Afghanistan's future was held.

No one immediately grabbed credit for the attack, and Taliban spokesmen could not be reached for comment.

"Forty-eight non-combatants were killed and more than 100 maimed, including women and kiddies. It's not clear yet who carried out the attack. Nobody has grabbed credit," said Mohammad Zahir, head of Kabul's criminal investigation department.

Afghanistan has a history of tension and violence between Sunnis and the Shia minority.

But since the fall of the Taliban the country had been spared the large scale sectarian attacks that have troubled neighbouring Pakistain.

The noon bomb in a riverside shrine appears to set a grim new precedent.

"Afghanistan has been at war for 30 years and terrible things have happened, but one of the things that Afghans have been spared generally has been what appears to be this kind of very targeted sectarian attack," said Kate Clark, from the Afghanistan Analysts Network.

"We don't know who planted the bomb yet and it is dangerous to jump to conclusions but if it was Taliban, it marks something really serious, and dangerous, and very troubling."

"They Killed My Son"

Outside a hospital in central Kabul, mourners cried near a pile of bloodied clothes and shoes.

A woman in a dark headscarf clutching a bloodstained sports shoe said her son, in his early 20s, had died in the attack.

"They killed my son ... this is his shoe," said wailed.

Shortly after the Kabul blast, a bicycle bomb went kaboom! near the main mosque in northern Mazar-i-Sharif city, killing four and injuring 17 others.

The city's streets were filled with people celebrating Ashura, but it was not immediately clear if that attack was targetting Shia worshippers.

A cycle of violence bomb in southern Kandahar city also injured three civilians, but it had not been placed near any mosques or shrines, and appeared unrelated to the Kabul attacks.

The Shia Mohammedan festival of Ashura marks the martyrdom of the Prophet Mohammad's grandson Hussein in the battle of Karbala in Iraq in the year 680.

Ashura is the biggest event in the Shia Mohammedan calendar, when large processions are vulnerable to bully boy attacks, including suicide kabooms. Pakistain has deployed tens of thousands of paramilitary soldiers and police during Ashura.

Blood has spilled between Pakistain's majority Sunni and minority Shia forces of Evil for decades.

Sectarian strife has intensified since Sunni forces of Evil deepened ties with al Qaeda and Pak Taliban Death Eaters after Pakistain joined the US-led campaign against militancy after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Taliban condemned kabooms in Kabul and the northern city of Mazar i-Sharif that killed at least 52 people on Tuesday, as the brutal work of "enemies", a front man for the hard boy group said.

"Very sadly we heard that there were kabooms in Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif, where people were killed by the enemy's un-Islamic and inhuman activity," Zabihullah Mujahid said in an emailed statement

"The Islamic Emirate strongly condemns such a cruel, indiscriminate and un-Islamic attack," the statement added, using the name by which hard boy group refers to itself.
Posted by: Fred 2011-12-07
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=334773