The police chief of Afghanistan's capital was among 19 people killed in a suicide bomb blast at a mosque yesterday as mourners gathered to pay respects to an assassinated anti-Taliban cleric.
The governor of troubled Kandahar province blamed Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network for the first suicide attack on an Afghan mosque while the interior minister said the bomber was believed to be a foreigner.
Kabul police chief Akram Khakreezwal was among mourners at the Abdul Rab Akhundzada mosque in the southern city of Kandahar when the bomber struck.
"I saw bodies scattered, blood all over the place. Dead policemen were also lying there," said shop owner Kalimullah, who reached the mosque moments after the blast.
It was the most serious in a recent spate of attacks with 19 people killed and 52 wounded, said Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali.
The bomber wore a police uniform, several survivors said. He had walked into the crowded mosque by mingling with Mr Khakreezwal's security men as they entered with their boss, who was from Kandahar, police said.
Mourners had gathered to pay respects to Mawlavi Abdullah Fayaz, a prominent critic of the Taliban who was killed on Sunday by gunmen on a motorcycle as he was leaving his office.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility but Kandahar governor Gul Agha Sherzai said authorities had got word of several Arab suicide bombers in the area.
"Definitely, it was al Qaeda. I can say he was an Arab," Mr Sherzai told reporters, referring to the bomber. The man's complexion, he said, was the proof.
Mr Jalali said in Kabul the bomber was believed to be a foreigner. He did not elaborate but described him as an enemy of Islam.
During the rule of the hardline Taliban, hundreds of Arabs came to Afghanistan to join bin Laden and al Qaeda. Some are still with anti-government insurgents on the Pakistan border.
Attacks on mosques in Afghanistan are rare, and until recent years suicide attacks were unheard of.
Afghanistan has not seen the sort of rivalry between majority Sunni Muslims and minority Shi'ites that has led to numerous blasts at mosques and shrines in neighbouring Pakistan.
Mr Fayaz, the head of a government-appointed Islamic scholar's council, survived a bomb attack at the Abdul Rab Akhundzada mosque two years ago that was blamed on the Taliban.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for his death but Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi ruled out involvement in yesterday's blast, condemning attacks on places of worship.
"This is not the Taliban's work," he said by telephone from an undisclosed location.
In another blast, an Afghan working for an agency clearing landmines was killed and four colleagues were wounded when a bomb planted on a bicycle went off as their vehicle passed in neighbouring Helmand province, an official there said.