The German Defence Minister Peter Struck said today that al Qaeda was behind a suicide car bomb attack that killed four German soldiers in Kabul on Saturday.
"It appears that the attacker was a member of al Qaeda," Struck said in an interview on German television.
Struck said members of the ousted Taliban regime, which sheltered the al Qaeda network, and loyalists of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a renegade warlord and leader of the radical party of Hezb-i-Islami, were also responsible.
"These are the three groups trying to force the international peacekeeping force out of Afghanistan," he said.
The attack killed four soldiers and wounded 31 in the biggest attack on the ISAF peacekeeping force to date, which came as the troops headed to the airport to fly home to Germany at the end of their assignment.
Afghan officials said soon after the suicide bomb that Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda, blamed by Washington for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, may have been involved.