AFGHANISTAN: A large explosion tore through the Kabul office of a US security contractor yesterday, killing at least seven people, including two Americans, and raising fears of a bombing campaign ahead of October's presidential election.
The bomb exploded at an office used by police trainers working for California-based Dyncorp in the commercial district of Shar-e-Nau.
"It was complete chaos, devastation," said Mr Nick Downie, a former British soldier and security expert who rushed to the scene from his office about 50 metres away.
Mr Downie, who heads Anso, a non-profit organisation that provides security advice to the aid community, said the bomb had left a crater at the Dyncorp doorway and estimated from the damage that about 80-100kg of explosives had been used.
The Taliban militia claimed the Kabul bombing, which a spokesman from President Hamid Karzai's office said killed two US nationals, two Afghans and three Nepalese in front of the offices of an international security company.
Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi said the bomb was detonated by a Taliban fighter using a remote control device.
"A few minutes ago he phoned our chief . . . to say that he finished his mission and is alive," Hakimi said.
It was the first bombing in the capital for several months and the most deadly attack on a foreign non-military target in the city.
The blast in the upmarket Shar-i-Naw area of Kabul, where dozens of aid agencies are also located, injured an unspecified number of other people and destroyed several vehicles, an Afghan official said.
Afghan police cordoned off the site of the explosion as ambulances rushed to the area to transfer injured people, witnesses said.
Mr Downie estimated closer to 10 had been killed and said he pulled four seriously injured Americans from the scene.
Dyncorp has at least two other compounds in Kabul, housing contractors who provide personal security for President Karzai and Mr Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador, as well as training police. A US embassy spokeswoman said staff had been confined to the embassy compound until the situation could be assessed.
The Kabul bombing came less than 24 hours after an explosion at a rural school in south-eastern Afghanistan killed nine children and one adult. It was not clear what caused the blast. "There were four children, five teenagers and one adult killed," Master Sgt Ann Bennett said from the US military press centre in Kabul.
Sgt Bennett said an eight-year-old boy injured in the school explosion was being treated at a US military base, but she was unsure how many more were wounded. "The explosion took place last night inside a private madrassah (religious school)," Paktia Governor Haji Assadullah Wafa reported. The premises were also used by a non-government organisation for teaching Afghan women.
Paktia's governor said there were contradictory reports about the cause of the blast, with some saying it was an explosive device placed on a motorcycle parked outside the school, and others saying a device was planted inside the school.
Hardline Islamic militants loyal to the former Taliban regime have said they would disrupt October's first direct vote for a president and have killed dozens of people in attacks on official and civilian targets in the south and east of the country in recent months.
They have sporadically attacked schools, especially girls' schools, to protest against the government's efforts to educate women.
The Taliban was ousted from power by a US-led alliance in late 2001.