February 03, 2009	Tuesday	Safar 07, 1430

KANDAHAR, Feb 2: A suicide bomber in police uniform killed 25 policemen and wounded several others on Monday after infiltrating their morning exercises in southern Afghanistan, authorities said.

The powerful blast, claimed by the Taliban, was the deadliest in Afghanistan this year and caused a scene of bloody carnage that an ambulance driver likened to a butcher’s shop.

The bomber walked into the station in the town of Tirin Kot, capital of the southern province of Uruzgan, at 9:30am and detonated explosives strapped to his body, authorities said.

Many were killed instantly and several of the wounded died later in hospital, taking the death toll to 25, provincial public health director Khan Agha Miakhail said.

“We had 22 bodies here (in hospital) and just now three of the wounded died... taking the total figure of those killed to 25,” he said.

Some of the wounded were in a critical condition and about eight were transferred to a hospital in a Nato-led military base in town, he said.

Ambulance driver Ahmad Shah, who helped evacuate the casualties, described the scene as similar to a ‘butcher’s shop’.

“There are body parts, pools of blood, police hats and boots scattered around the compound in a mixture of blood, and the smell of explosives,” he told AFP by telephone from inside the station.

“All I can see is blood, pieces of uniform and body parts here. Around 18 bodies are piled in a corner and you can even see body parts of the suicide attacker outside the huge compound,” Shah said.

It was the deadliest attack this year in war-ravaged Afghanistan where suicide bombings are frequently claimed by the Taliban, who were in government between 1996 and 2001.

The fledgling police force is one of the main targets of attacks by the Taliban. Officials say this is because police are easier to target than the heavily protected Afghan and international military forces.

Interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary said the policemen were conducting their morning exercises when they were hit.

The ministry, which is in charge of police, denounced the blast as ‘barbaric’.

UN Special Representative Kai Eid and the European Union mission training Afghan police also condemned the attack.

Provincial police chief Juma Gul Hemat said the attacker was not a policeman but had acquired a police uniform which helped him blend into the crowd. An investigation was under way to see how this had been possible, he added.

A spokesman for the Taliban, Yousuf Ahmadi, told AFP by telephone that his organisation was responsible.

Uruzgan is one of four provinces in southern Afghanistan badly hit by the increasingly deadly insurgency.—AFP