AFGHANISTAN: At least four people were killed and 18 injured yesterday in an apparent assassination attempt against the Afghan Defence Minister, Mr Mohammad Qasim Fahim, amid fears of a plot to bomb the interim cabinet, officials said.
The attack in the eastern city of Jalalabad came after some 260 people were arrested last week over an alleged plot to sabotage the fledgling government.
The victims of yesterday's explosion, including a child, had gathered on the street near the centre of town to greet the minister when the device went off in a roadside stall seconds before the arrival of his 50-strong convoy.
"Four people, including a child, were killed. Eighteen others were injured," the minister's secretary, Mr Gulbuddin, said. "They were just ordinary people who were there to welcome the minister."
The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) reported that a fifth person died later in hospital.
The private news agency said up to 53 people had been injured in the blast, including schoolchildren who had come to welcome Mr Fahim.
A state of emergency has been declared at two hospitals in Jalalabad, the agency said.
The convoy had been making its way from the city's airport to the city centre when the device exploded in Talashi square in mid-morning, Mr Gulbuddin said.
Asked if the attack was targeted at Mr Fahim, Mr Gulbuddin replied: "Naturally". Mr Fahim's senior lieutenant, Mr Besmillah Khan, and the corps commander of the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, Gen Atta Mohammad, were also in the convoy, Mr Gulbuddin added. The minister was officially in the region to meet troops.
AIP later reported that Mr Fahim was returning to Kabul and had cancelled a planned trip to the Torkham border point into Pakistan after some 1,000 tribesmen blocked the main road to the crossing in protest against the interim government's campaign to eradicate opium crops.
Mr Fahim, an ethnic Tajik, is the successor to the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance military leader, Mr Ahmad Shah Masood, who was assassinated two days before the September 11th terror attacks in the US.
Officials said those arrested last week were followers of the former prime minister, Mr Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the ethnic Pashtun leader of the fundamentalist Hezb-e-Islami party.
Mr Fahim is a prominent member of Hezb-e-Islami's arch rivals, the Jamiat-i-Islami, and once commanded troops against Mr Hekmatyar in the south of Kabul in the mid-1990s.
According to Prof Mohuddin Dareez, from Kabul University's department of political sciences, the attack on Mr Fahim's convoy was likely to have been a protest against foreign presences in Afghanistan. - (AFP)