24 killed in Afghan suicide attack

24 killed in Afghan suicide attack Agencies

MEHTAR LAM, Afghanistan: A suicide bomber killed at least 24 people, including the country's deputy head of intelligence, in an attack near a mosque in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, officials said. The assassination of such a high-profile member of the Western-backed Afghan security services, which are on the front line of an increasingly deadly Taleban insurgency, shocked the country just weeks after controversial elections. Lutfullah Mashal, governor of Laghman province who escaped injury in the attack, told Reuters the bomber appeared from a shop and blew himself up while officials were getting into cars outside the mosque in the provincial capital Mehtar Lam. He said the 24 dead included two provincial officials as well as Abdullah Laghmani, deputy head of the powerful National Directorate for Security and one of the highest-ranking security officials in President Hamid Karzai's government to be killed. "It is obviously the work of the Taleban who are trying to destabilize Afghanistan," Mashal said. He said 50 people were wounded. A Taleban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said the group had sent a suicide bomber to carry out the Laghman attack. The presidential palace confirmed the death toll. "By conducting such a vicious act and killing of religious scholars and innocents, the terrorists showed that they trample Islamic values on the orders of their masters and can go to any extent in committing a crime," Karzai said in a statement. "I saw people coming out of the mosque and some of them were getting into their vehicles. I didn't know them. Then the explosion happened. I was wounded. When I opened my eyes I was in hospital," one witness told AFP. Meanwhile, Afghanistan's election commission said Karzai is creeping closer to the 50 percent threshold that would allow him to avoid a runoff in the country's presidential election.