http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/07/world/asia/suicide-bombers-attack-shiite-worshipers-in-afghanistan.html

December 6, 2011

Rare Attacks on Shiites Kill Scores in Afghanistan

By SHARIFULLAH SAHAK and ROD NORDLAND

KABUL, Afghanistan -- At least 58 people were killed and scores wounded after bombers struck Shiite religious observances on Tuesday in three cities, detonating explosives amid crowds of worshipers in the first such sectarian attacks in a decade of war in Afghanistan.

Two of the attacks -- in Kabul, where dozens died, and in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, where four were killed -- were carried out by suicide bombers on foot. A third attack, in the southern city of Kandahar, used a bomb hidden on a parked motorcycle, but no one was killed.

Ghulam Sakhi Kargar, the spokesman for the Afghan Public Health Ministry, said 54 people were killed in the Kabul bombing and 164 wounded and admitted to hospitals. Gen. Abdul Zahair, the head of the criminal investigation division of the Kabul Police Department, put the death toll at 56 in Kabul, with similar numbers of wounded. Both officials said that many of the wounded were in very critical condition so the death toll may rise.

Shirjan Durani, the spokesman for the police chief in Mazar-i-Sharif, said that the attack there killed at least four civilians and wounded 20 others, although he said that attacker failed to disrupt the Ashura holiday celebrations there because of heavy security.

The Kandahar attack targeted a Shiite procession but missed it, wounding two policemen and three passersby, according to Police Chief Abdul Razaq of Kandahar.

An e-mail to news organizations from the spokesman for the Taliban, Zabiullah Mujahid, denied responsibility. "We strongly condemn this wild and inhuman act by our enemies, who are trying to blame us and trying to divide Afghans by doing such attacks on Muslims."

All past suicide attacks in Afghanistan have been attributed to Taliban insurgents or allied groups like the Haqqani network and Al Qaeda. There have been no known suicide attacks by other parties to the conflict.

While Afghanistan's Shiite minority community, mostly ethnic Hazaras, was savagely discriminated against during the years of Taliban rule, it had not been singled out for attack during the current insurgency. Unlike neighboring Pakistan, where sectarian violence is rampant between Shiite and Sunni groups, there had been little such conflict in Afghanistan.

Ashura is the day on which Shiite Muslims honor the death of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. Although it has long been a public holiday in Afghanistan, ceremonies were more visible this year than in the past.

In Kabul, the suicide bomber was apparently among a procession of worshipers outside one of the main Shiite mosques, the Abul Fazal Abbas shrine in the Murad Khani neighborhood, close to the finance and defense ministries, when he detonated an explosive vest. The mosque was damaged by the blast.

The worshipers were beating their chests to show their sorrow at Imam Hussein's martyrdom, with some of them also flagellating themselves, using barbed chains to beat themselves on the back.

"The explosion took place inside the crowd," said a wounded man, Said Zaki, 18, whose face and clothes were covered in blood. "We didn't see who this person was but he was definitely on foot. We saw 30 or 40 people on the ground missing arms and limbs."

The deadly attacks followed an international conference on Afghanistan in Bonn, Germany, on Monday that had been viewed as a milestone that would cement progress in ending the war, both politically and militarily. But the conference fell considerably short of the objectives that officials had envisioned, underscoring the multiple challenges facing a government undermined by corruption and threatened by a tenacious insurgency.

Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting from Kabul, and Taimoor Shah from Kandahar.