June 8, 2003	Sunday	Rabi-us-Sani 7, 1424

KABUL, June 7: Three German peacekeepers were among six people killed by a devastating car-bomb attack on a bus carrying foreign peacekeeping troops in Kabul, in the deadliest attack to date on the multinational force. However, German foreign minister in Berlin said four German soldiers were killed in the blast.

The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said the peacekeepers were “deliberately attacked” in the explosion at around 8:00am when their bus was travelling to Kabul airport, where they were due to fly out of Afghanistan after completing their tour of duty.

The deputy commander of the Afghan military’s Kabul garrison, Afzal Aman, said a total of six people were killed and 11 wounded.

The ISAF bus was destroyed in the blast, near a base housing German ISAF troops around five kilometres east of the city centre on a main road leading to the principal eastern city of Jalalabad.

The blast flung the bus off the road and left bodies strewn around the site, witnesses said.

Investigations were under way “in close cooperation with the Afghan authorities,” Bertholee, a Dutch general, said at the peacekeepers’ headquarters, which came under rocket attack in March.

The wounded were taken to military hospitals at Kabul International Airport, the main ISAF base and the US-led military coalition’s base at Bagram, 50km north of Kabul,” ISAF said in an earlier statement.

Aman earlier said the blast appeared to have been a suicide bombing, citing witnesses who saw a taxi alongside the bus just before the explosion.

“There is a strong possibility of a suicide car bombing,” he said, blaming “the enemies of Afghanistan.”

A statement issued by the US military at Bagram Air Base also said reports indicated it was caused by a suicide bomber.

The Jalalabad road is the main artery linking the capital and the Pakistani border and is regularly patrolled by ISAF troops as far as the Kabul city limits.

Some 2,300 German troops serve with ISAF, which is currently under joint German-Dutch command.

The attack is the deadliest against ISAF and the latest in a series of incidents to blight the peacekeeping force which has patrolled Kabul under a UN mandate following the December 2001 downfall of the former Taliban regime.—AFP