Kabul, Afghanistan – A suicide bomber on a motorbike drove into a convoy of Afghan National Army soldiers boarding minibuses outside their training base on the edge of Kabul on Wednesday, killing nine people and wounding 28, the Afghan Defense Ministry’s spokesman, Gen. Zaher Azimi, said.
The dead included eight military personnel and one civilian bus driver, he said. The attacker was also killed.
The bombing was the first major incident of violence since Afghanistan’s parliamentary elections 10 days ago and the first suicide attack in Kabul in months, shattering the short period of calm that reigned during elections and serving a reminder that al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies remain a deadly threat.
Intelligence officials had warned in recent days that suspected al-Qaeda suicide bombers had entered the Afghan capital and the southern part of the country and intended to detonate explosions.
The attack in Kabul occurred at 4:30 p.m. local time as people were leaving work and crowds were gathering to board buses. The Kabul military training base lies on one of the busiest roads leading into the capital.
Three minibuses exploded into flames, police said. Azimi said one of the guards on the gate saw a motorbike drive into the crowd but exactly what happened was still under investigation.
A Taliban spokesman, Abdul Latif Hakimi, claimed responsibility for the attack in a phone call to one of the local language services of BBC radio. The bomber was named Mullah Sardar and had been a member of the Taliban, Hakimi said.
Two other attacks were reported in eastern Afghanistan. A United Nations car was hit in a roadside explosion in eastern Afghanistan, critically wounding an engineer from Bangladesh, and two policemen and one civilian were killed in another mine explosion. Both attacks were blamed on Taliban insurgents, local officials told news agencies.
Suicide attacks are not common in Afghanistan, but police and intelligence officials have warned of threats by al-Qaeda to cause spectacular damage in the main cities over the election period. In June, a bomber blew himself up in a mosque in the southern town of Kandahar, killing 19 and raising fears that a campaign was beginning to disrupt elections. In May, a bomber blew himself up in an Internet cafe in downtown Kabul, killing two people.
The latest attack came as Afghanistan’s interior minister, Ahmed Ali Jalali, resigned after nearly three years in the job. Jalali cleared his desk Wednesday, handing the work temporarily over to the deputy minister for security, Zarar Ahmed Muqbal.
Jalali’s departure comes at an uncertain time, as insurgents have forced an escalation in violence this year and American military casualties have run the highest of any year since military operations began in Afghanistan in 2001.
Jalali leaves behind a troubled Interior Ministry, with much of its forces still poorly trained and equipped. The United States is beginning a $860 million program to bolster Afghanistan’s police forces, with foreign police officers arriving to train regional police chiefs.