The blast occurred around 8:15 a.m. local time and was powerful enough to sheer off the roof and both sides of the bus, uprooting many of the front seats. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, with one person who presented himself as a spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, saying by telephone that a suicide bomber had successfully infiltrated the police and boarded the vehicle.
Kabul’s police chief, Esmatullah Daulatzai, said, “Our investigation shows that a suicide attacker jumped into the vehicle and blew himself up.”
Whatever the method, the bombing was especially lethal, unleashing shards of glass and metal into a crowded area beside police headquarters, the governor’s office and the national archive. Two other vehicles were ripped apart by the explosion. The many injured included pedestrians waiting at an adjacent bus terminal.
Raz Muhammad, a policeman standing guard at headquarters, was among the first to reach the demolished bus. “Those in the front seats, their bodies were very ripped apart,” he said. “Half of their heads were gone and there was brain matter all over. Very few of those inside survived. I could help those able to walk.”
Today’s suicide attack was the sixth in Kabul this year and the second within two days. The Taliban are employing tactics similar to those used by insurgents in Iraq. The use of improvised explosive devices is also on the increase in Afghanistan, including one employed today to kill three members of the American-led coalition and their local interpreter in Kandahar Province.
There is confusion about the death toll in today’s attack. Police officials originally said 36 had died, but the chief later reduced that number, although it remains possible that more than 24 were killed. Corpses were taken to more than one hospital and then quickly released to families.
Chief Daulatzai also said about 52 people were injured, including 38 whose wounds were severe enough to require hospitalization.
The attack occurred on a heat-swaddled day. Havoc immediately spread through an area that customarily teems with people, in a country long contaminated with tragedy.
An anguished 14-year-old named Emal recognized the bus as the one driven by his father, Muhammad Hashib. “I must see him,” he cried out as police officials kept him away from the wreckage. Though they knew otherwise, they tried to convince the boy that his father was alive, telling him to go home to await news.
Then the policemen themselves began their own ordeal of mourning, listing the names of those friends they had lost moments before: Azul, Jaleel, Habib.
The policeman they called Habib was actually Habibullah, a 26-year-old who had once taught Dari literature and Islamic studies at a high school before entering the police academy. He became a police instructor after completing the three-year program. Last year, he married, and this morning he had eaten breakfast with his wife and infant son before leaving for the Interior Ministry, a collection point where the teachers then catch the bus for the academy.
“I barely recognized his corpse,” said his brother Wahidullah, another policeman. He had searched for Habibullah at the military hospital where many bodies were taken. “I recognized his belt, but his eyes and forehead were gone. I had to look very, very hard.” As he said this, another policeman embraced him and the two men wept.
The dead were washed, wrapped in shrouds and given over to their kin. Habibullah’s body was taken to his home village north of Kabul, Ahmad Shab Baba Mina. There, in a ritual of grieving repeated among families on a sorrowful Sunday, his body was displayed in a coffin in the courtyard of his ancestral home.
Female mourners who, by Islamic custom, are not permitted to attend the burial, wailed with pain indoors while the men gathered in the street. Dozens of Habibullah’s students came to say their goodbyes — each of them dressed in the gabardine of cadets with blue stripes above their left pocket to indicate their seniority.
“He was so nice,” said one cadet, Abdul Wares. “We have a saying in this country that a man is so good he would not even hurt an ant. Habibullah was such a man.”
Habibullah’s mourners wondered about the suicide bombers. How could men believe such acts were welcomed by Allah in heaven?
“There is no place in Islam for suicide,” said Col. Abdul Qadir, one of Habibullah’s many relatives in the police department. “And this was not just a suicide. This was the murder of people who were innocent of any crime.”
At 2:30 p.m., the body was carried from the house in a simple wood coffin that was adorned with a black and gold blanket and wildflowers. A caravan proceeded to a small mosque beside a cemetery. A few prayers were said before mourners took turns looking into the open casket, where the head wounds were hidden beneath balls of cotton.
Then Habibullah, the police academy teacher, was laid into his grave. Though many mourners were in tears, they chanted words of congratulations because in their eyes the dead man had become a martyr. Finally, his students covered him for eternity with soil.
Source : www.nytimes.com
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