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Suicide attack on Indian consulate

7 children among 9 killed in Afghanistan; Delhi condemns attack

AFP, lalalabad
Suicide bombers targeted the Indian consulate in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad yesterday, detonating an explosives-packed car and killing nine civilians, including seven children in a nearby mosque.
A spokesman for the Taliban militant group immediately denied responsibility for the blast that erupted outside the Indian mission and left the mosque, private houses, tailors and other shops in ruins.
"A car containing explosives hit a barrier near the consulate and detonated," Ahmadzia Abdulzai, spokesman for Nangarhar province, of which Jalalabad is the capital, told AFP. "There were three suicide bombers in the car."
Nangarhar police chief Sharif Amin confirmed that the consulate was the intended target of the attack, which created a large crater in the road as survivors wearing blood-stained clothing ran for cover.
India strongly condemned the deadly attack on its consulate, vowing the raid would not stop it from helping rebuild the war-torn nation.
The suicide attacks "must be condemned in the strongest possible terms", India's foreign ministry said in a statement, adding they were a reminder of the threat posed to Afghanistan by" terrorism".
"This attack has once again highlighted (that) the main threat to Afghanistan's security and stability stems from terrorism and the terror
FROM PAGE 16 machine that continues to operate from beyond its borders," the ministry said, in a thinly veiled reference to neighbouring Pakistan
The Afghan interior ministry condemned the bombing as "heinous" and said nine people had died in total, with 21 other civilians wounded.
Syed Akbaruddin, a spokesman for the Indian foreign ministry in New Delhi, said that all officials were safe after the attack -the first major strike in Afghanistan during the holy month of Ramadan that started on July 10.
India, which has spent more than two billion dollars of aid in Afghanistan since the Taliban regime fell in 2001, has previously been targeted in the war-tom country.
In 2008, a car bomb at the Indian embassy in Kabul killed 60 people and the
embassy was again hit by a suicide strike in 2009. In 2010, two guesthouses in Kabul used by Indians were attacked.
India has been a key supporter of Kabul's postTaliban government, and analysts have often pointed to the threat of a "proxy war" in Afghanistan between India and its archrival Pakistan.
Pakistan, which is widely seen as covertly supporting the Taliban, denies any links to militant attacks in Afghanistan and points to its own bloody fight against Islamist extremists.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told AFP that their fighters were not involved in Saturday’s strike. "We do not claim the responsibility for this attack," he said.
Jalalabad is situated on the key route from the
Pakistani border region -where many militants are based - to Kabul, and it has been the location of repeated assaults in recent years.
Besides Taliban, Afghanistan is beset by a myriad of armed groups ranging from Islamist rebels to criminal gangs and militias formed during the Soviet occupation in the 1980s and the 1992-1996 civil war.
The Haqqani network, a Pakistan-based group allied with the Taliban and closely linked to the Pakistani intelligence service, was blamed for earlier attacks on Indian facilities in Afghanistan.
The US State Department said Friday it was closing at least 22 US embassies or consulates on Sunday, a work day in many Islamic countries, due to security threats.INTERPOL ISSUES JAILBREAK ALERT - PAGE 10