AFGHANISTAN: President Hamid Karzai condemns latest Taliban suicide bomb attack which killed 30 in Kabul

Calling it "an act of extreme cowardliness," Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemns the latest Taliban suicide bomb attack which killed 30 in the capital Kabul. Afghan President Hamid Karzai denounced the latest suicide attack which killed 28 Afghan troops and 2 civilians on Saturday (September 29) in an attack on an army bus in the capital Kabul. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, the deadliest in the Afghan capital since the hardline Islamist movement was ousted from power for harbouring al Qaeda leaders in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. Karzai called the attack "an act of extreme cowardliness." "It was a terrible tragedy, no doubt an act of extreme cowardliness on a part of those that committed it. No doubt someone who did this was against people against humanity, definitely against Islam. A man that calls himself Muslim would not blow up innocent people in the month of Ramadan. An enemy of all of us, an enemy of Afghanistan, an enemy of humanity, something that we condemn in the strongest possible terms," Karzai said during a news conference at his heavily fortified presidential palace. A suicide bomber dressed in army uniform got on the bus carrying Afghan National Army personnel to work, the Defence Ministry said. The blast split the bus into two and shattered shop windows in a central district of the capital. Police and soldiers piled bodies onto army vehicles. Taliban insurgents have largely shied away from large-scale conventional attacks on foreign and Afghan forces since suffering heavy casualties in pitched battles last year. Instead, the rebels have resorted to suicide and roadside bomb attacks aimed at convincing ordinary Afghans their government and its Western backers are unable to provide security. A suicide bomb attack in June on a bus carrying police officers in Kabul killed 24.

ITN Source | September 29, 2007

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