UN condemns Kabul blasts

The United Nations special envoy to Afghanistan has condemned a series of roadside bomb blasts in the Afghan capital Kabul on Tuesday and Wednesday that killed one person and injured at least 50 others. The explosions, which appear to have been directed against government institutions and staff, served no purpose other than to terrorise and kill or maim ordinary citizens, Tom Koenigs, Special Representative of United Nations Secretary-General to Afghanistan, said on Wednesday in Kabul. “It is an outrage that anyone should attempt to inflict new pain and loss upon the people of this country at a time when its wounds are still not healed,” Koenigs noted. On Wednesday, two bomb blasts rocked the capital. The first struck a bus at 07:40 local time carrying commerce ministry workers in the northern Khair Khana suburb, wounding four and killing one, according to officials at the interior ministry. “Four commerce ministry workers were wounded and one was killed when a handcart full of explosives detonated by remote control near to their bus,” Ali Shah Paktiawal, head of the criminal department at Kabul police headquarters, told IRIN. About an hour earlier a similar blast struck a bus transporting Afghan National Army (ANA) officers to a busy central area of Kabul, wounding around 40 army officers, according to the defence ministry. “Explosives were placed in a handcart on the road side and while the ANA bus was passing by, the explosion took place," Paktiawal explained. Later on Wednesday a third device exploded in the capital, but caused no casualties or damage. A day earlier, two bomb blasts wounded at least six people. The first blast detonated near a bus carrying government officials and wounded one interior ministry worker. The second, placed in a handcart, exploded at a central intersection some 200 m from the presidential palace and wounded five civilians, according to the police. Afghan officials have repeatedly blamed Taliban insurgents for such attacks. The Taliban were toppled by US-led coalition forces in late 2001. Most were not killed or captured and fled to neighbouring Pakistan. The radical Islamic movement has since regrouped and is now waging a deadly insurgency against the government and US-led coalition forces, mainly in the south. More than 1,100 people, including nearly 50 foreign troops, have lost their lives in insurgency-related violence in 2006.