KHOST: About 50 people were killed and 60 others wounded when a suicide blast ripped through crowds at a volleyball game in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, the deadliest attack in the country since 2011.

The explosion struck during a tournament between three local teams in Paktika province, with many children among the dead and injured.

The high death toll underlined the challenges facing President Ashraf Ghani, as US-led Nato troops wind down operations and the national security forces take over responsibility for imposing stability.

“I and my friends were watching the game and we were cheering each time our team scored,” Abdulhay, an 11-year boy being treated for minor injuries in hospital in Sharana, the provincial capital of Paktika, said by telephone.

“Then I heard a boom that threw me back unconscious. I opened my eyes in the hospital and don’t know if my friends are dead or alive.” There was no immediate response from the Taliban, the militant group behind many of the attacks across Afghanistan.

“The suicide attacker was on a motorcycle, he detonated himself in the middle of a volleyball match,” Attaullah Fazli, deputy governor of Paktika, said.

“A lot of people including some provincial officials and the police chief were there. About 50 people have been killed, and 60 injured, a lot of them seriously.”

The blast, in Yahya Khail district of Paktika, erupted at about 5pm when hundreds of people had gathered to watch a match, provincial spokesman Mukhlis Afghan said.

“The scale of the attack and its aftermath is shocking,” he said.

“We have asked Kabul to send us helicopters to take some of the critically wounded for treatment.”

President Ghani, who came to power in September, swiftly condemned the attack, describing it as “inhumane and un-Islamic”.

“This kind of brutal killing of civilians cannot be justified,” he said in a statement that put the toll at 45 people dead. One eyewitness, Khushal, 25, said that he saw a man in a traditional shawl get off his motorbike before blowing himself up.

Paktika was also struck by a massive suicide blast in July, when a bomber driving a truck packed with explosives killed at least 41 people at a busy market in Urgun district.

A suicide bombing at a mosque in the northern province of Faryab in October 2012 killed 42 people, while another suicide blast at a shrine in Kabul on the day of Ashura in December 2011 killed 80.

Sunday’s attack occurred on the same day that the lower house of parliament approved agreements to allow about 12,500 Nato-led troops to stay on next year.

Published in Dawn, November 24th , 2014