Afghanistan:A suicide bomber killed 50 Afghans, including six MPs and several children yesterday in one of the bloodiest incidents since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
Death tolls varied widely in the aftermath of the attack in Baghlan, 90 miles north of Kabul, when a bomber set off explosives he was wearing among a crowd gathered to welcome a parliamentary delegation to a sugar factory.
An interior ministry spokesman said 28 people had died and 59 were injured. But the provincial security chief said 50 bodies had been counted, and warned that the figure could rise.
If confirmed, his toll would make it the deadliest single attack in Afghanistan for many years, underscoring the perilous slide in security across the country.
The attack may mark an ominous shift in insurgent tactics. More than 200 people have died in suicide attacks this year. But until yesterday insurgents mostly targeted security forces, although many civilians have been killed. Attackers have never before targeted so many civilians or MPs from the fledgling parliament.
Witnesses saw the bomber holding a bomb in one hand and wearing an explosive belt around his chest. Mohammad Rahim, who lost two cousins in the blast, said: "I saw bodies lying in the streets and some of the people were stealing the weapons of the dead soldiers. Children were screaming for help. It's like a nightmare."
The head of hospitals in Baghlan, Yousaf Faiz, said many children were hurt. "The children were standing on both sides of the street, and were shaking the hands of the officials, then suddenly the explosion happened," he said.
Zabiullah Mujahed, a Taliban spokesman, denied responsibility. "It might have been carried out by their rivals in the parliament. These parliamentarians were mujahideen and killed lots of civilians. Maybe someone was trying to take revenge."
President Hamid Karzai condemned the "heinous act of terrorism", blaming it on "the enemies of peace and security".
A US military spokesman, Lieut Col David Accetta, said he had no information indicating that al-Qaeda was behind the blast. Among the dead was Mustafa Kazimi, a former Northern Alliance fighter who once served in Mr Karzai's government. He was a spokesman for the National Front, a new party largely made up of veterans of the mujahideen war against Soviet occupation in the 1980s. Five other MPs, who had been visiting the sugar factory as part of an economic commission, were also killed. Their deaths prompted an emergency sitting of parliament last night.
"This is a great shock," said Kabul MP Shukria Barakzai by phone. "You can see they are from different tribes, different backgrounds, different ethnic groups. There is Hazara, Tajik and Uzbek, Shia and Sunni. Their target is not the foreigners, it is the Afghan nation. They just want to kill people, that is all."
The British ambassador, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, called it a "cowardly and abhorrent act of terrorism".
The Taliban-affiliated group Hizb-i-Islami has strong ties in the Baghlan area. Its fugitive leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda.
In Kandahar the Canadian defence minister Peter MacKay had a narrow escape when a rocket landed near him during a visit to a base. This year has been the deadliest in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban, with 5,500 deaths.