AFGHANISTAN: Afghan authorities blamed al- Qaeda for a suicide bombing at a Kandahar mosque yesterday that killed 20 people, including the Kabul police chief. Dozens more were wounded.
The attack - the biggest suicide bombing to date in Afghanistan - has stoked fears that insurgents are adopting Iraq-style tactics.
A suicide bomber disguised as a policeman slipped into a funeral service for Abdul Fayaz, a pro-government mullah who was assassinated last Sunday.
Survivors described a scene of death and mutilation. Gen Akram Khakrezwal, head of police in the Afghan capital, was named among at least 20 fatalities.
The Kandahar governor, Gul Agha Sherzai, said the bomber was an Arab follower of Osama bin Laden. "The attacker was a member of al-Qaeda," he said. "We have found documents on his body that show he was an Arab.
The Taliban denied involvement in the attack, which President Hamid Karzai condemned as "an act of cowardice by the enemies of Islam". The massacre is the latest blow to Mr Karzai and the US-led coalition which, almost four years after ousting the Taliban, is faced with a surge in militant attacks.
Assassins on motorbikes gunned down Mullah Fayaz days after he denounced the one-eyed Taliban leader Mullah Omar at a meeting of Islamic clerics. He was a Karzai supporter in a turbulent pro-Taliban province.
Two weeks earlier Clementina Cantoni, an Italian aid worker, was kidnapped in Kabul. Her abductors, believed to be part of a criminal gang, have released a hostage video but made no public demands.
Yesterday's bomb will further disturb American generals and their British allies in the run-up to the September 18th parliamentary elections. Although Taliban insurgents regularly plant roadside bombs or ambush coalition troops, they rarely use suicide tactics and attacks on mosques are virtually unheard of.
"It's not a traditionally Afghan thing," said Joanna Nathan, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group. "That may actually be the significance of this attack - it shows the influence of a global jihadi network."
Threatening "night letters" were distributed to homes in Kandahar on Tuesday, she said. "They said that anyone who took part in the elections would meet the same fate as the assassinated mullah."
Nick Downie of Anso, a security group for non-governmental organisations, said there had been a "massive" increase in "night letters" over the past week. "This time they are all over the country, not just in the southern areas."