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KABUL, Sept 1: Three Afghans were killed and at least 17 injured near Kabul on Sunday when an anti-tank mine exploded, destroying an ambulance.
The vehicle, belonging to a Danish de-mining agency, had gone to a minefield near Bagram Air Base just north of the capital to collect the body of an Afghan who had died a few minutes previously when an anti-personnel mine went off.
In a separate incident in the west of Kabul, one Afghan man died and a British peacekeeper was slightly hurt when an explosive device hidden in a wooden handcart went off.
As the Danish ambulance headed back to Kabul after picking up the body, it hit an anti-tank mine, triggering an explosion which killed three people on board and injured 17 passengers and bystanders.
All that was left of the vehicle was a tangle of blackened metal on the side of the road.
All four dead had been working for the Afghan Mine Clearance Planning Agency (MCPA). Five MCPA staff were injured, as were six Afghans working for the Danish De-Mining Group (DDG) and six bystanders in a nearby crowded bazaar.
FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED: Noor-ul-Haq, deputy director of the MCPA, said he suspected someone deliberately planted the mine recently, because it went off on a road that was frequently used by his and other agencies.
“This is the worst incident for our agency in 12 years of operating in Afghanistan,” he told Reuters.
It was also one of the worst incidents involving mines since the fall of the hardline Islamic Taliban regime late last year.
At least 17 people died last November when their bus ran over an anti-tank mine just north of the capital.
In July 13 passengers died and six were injured when a bus detonated a mine in the central province of Bamiyan.
There are still millions of undetected mines in Afghanistan, the legacy of 10 years of Soviet occupation, bloody internecine fighting and six years of war between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance resistance movement.
The strategic Bagram Air Base, which serves as the main US military headquarters in Afghanistan, is heavily mined.
DDG operations officer Hayatullah Hayat told Reuters in Kabul that the blast took place shortly after 10 a.m.
He said US ambulances rushed to the scene of the explosion and took the injured to a military hospital inside Bagram.
The presence of the US military may explain why early reports indicated it was a US ambulance which had hit the mine.
ANOTHER BLAST: Hours later in Kabul a small explosive device went off outside the compound of the now derelict former Soviet embassy, killing one Afghan who was cycling past and slightly injuring a British soldier.
The device, hidden in a hand-drawn wooden cart, also injured an Afghan woman, according to witnesses. The badly mutilated body of the man was taken to the nearby Karte Se surgical hospital.
Major James Kelly, a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), said that British peacekeepers were driving past when the explosion went off.
“One British soldier was slightly injured in the wrist,” Kelly told Reuters. “There were two ISAF vehicles driving down the boulevard towards the old King’s Palace when there was a minor explosion.”
Kelly said the British soldier was taken to a military hospital.
At the scene, police officer Mohammad Hassan pointed to a small crater in the earth left by the force of the explosion. ISAF troops looked on from an armoured personnel carrier.
The Kabul explosion was at least the ninth in the capital in three weeks. All but one were described as minor, and only a few minor injuries were reported until Sunday.
Last Sunday a device went off in a dustbin outside a U.N. guest house compound, and hours later another minor explosion was reported near the Inter-Continental Hotel.
ISAF also reported three blasts near Kabul airport on Saturday. Around 5,000 peacekeepers are in Kabul to boost security nearly a year after the fall of the Taliban. Afghan police stepped up spot checks of vehicles at major intersections on Sunday evening.—Reuters
