| More on yesterday's incident... |
At least four people were killed in an assassination attempt on an ex-Afghan president on Sunday. Two attackers and two bystanders were killed Sunday in the Afghan capital in a suicide car bombing targeting the head of the country’s Senate, who escaped unharmed, the Afghan Interior Ministry said. “There was a suicide attack this morning. Four people have died. The attack targeted Sebghatullah Mujadidi, who was not hurt,” said Yousuf Stanizai, the ministry spokesman. The dead were two attackers and two passers-by, one a young girl and the other an old man, Stanizai said.Mujadidi, a former Afghan president, now heads the upper house of parliament. He was quoted as blaming Pakistani agents for the blast and Afghan President Hamid Karzai separately blamed unspecified foreigners. It was not immediately known who was behind the attack. An aide to Mujadidi quoted him as telling visitors that the attack was planned by Pakistan’s secret service. “Friends and relatives are coming to visit his excellency (Mujadidi). He is telling them that the attack was planned by foreigners and Pakistan’s secret service,” aide Mustafah Ghazi told AFP.
Karzai said authorities had been warned of a plot to target senior officials. “We’d information since two months ago there were plans to attack high-ranking government personnel, particularly Hazrat Saheb (Mujadidi),” he told a press conference. “With no doubt, Afghanistan in the past 30 years has been destroyed by the hands of foreigners...there is no doubt that this attack too is by foreigners,” the president said, without elaborating. “This attack by terrorists was against Afghanistan’s peace and stability,” Karzai said, adding that Mujadidi’s claim of Pakistani involvement would be investigated.