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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

AFGHANISTAN: Bomb explosion kills two in Kabul

KABUL, 3 July 2003 (IRIN) - The Afghan government announced that two men were killed when a bomb prematurely exploded on Tuesday at 21:00 local time in the Pol-e Charkhi, three kilometres from the Afghan National Army training centre and German peacekeeping base in the east of the capital, Kabul.

"One person was smashed to pieces and was beyond recognition and the other was recognised as a resident of the same locality," Afghan Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali told IRIN in Kabul on Thursday.

According to Jalali, the men were carrying the bomb and wanted to plant it in the area. "A pick was found with them, which indicated that the men wanted to place the mine at some point," he said, adding that eyewitnesses had said a taxi car had been seen at the site, but moved off after the explosion.

The Kabul-based English newspaper The Kabul Times said an ID card was found from one of the suspects' pockets indicating that he was a 28-year-old man from Tagab District in the northeastern Kapisa Province.

The mine explosion is the only incident of its kind in Kabul after almost a month when four German peacekeepers were killed and more than 20 wounded in a suicide car-bomb attack on in east of the city near the headquarters of the UN-mandated international peace keeping forces headquarters on 7 June.

However, the interior minister said there had been other scattered terrorist incidents in the country in the course of the last two weeks.

"On Monday, a bomb exploded in a mosque in Kandahar, which injured over 20 people," Jalali said, noting that earlier the imam of that mosque had given a verdict rejecting the Taliban's call for jihad, or holy war, against government and foreign troops in Afghanistan. The minister said one person had been arrested in connection with that explosion.

Jalali also referred to two incidents against foreign organisations in the southeastern city of Ghazni this week. "There was a rocket attack against road construction crew and had no casualties," he said, adding that in a carjacking incident a vehicle of an international organisation working for the Kabul-Kandahar highway reconstruction was stolen.

"Three carjackers were arrested who belonged to Taliban and confessed that they wanted to target NGOs to create an environment of mistrust and insecurity in the country," Jalali asserted.

Theme(s): (IRIN) Conflict

[ENDS]

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