A suicide bomber targeted an Afghan memorial service on Thursday held for the assassinated brother of the president, killing three people including a senior cleric and a child. Local officials said 15 people were also wounded when the attacker blew himself up in a mosque in the southern city of Kandahar, where visiting cabinet ministers from the capital Kabul had to be airlifted to safety.
The bombing underscores the likelihood of renewed instability in Kandahar, one of Afghanistan’s bloodiest battlegrounds and the birthplace of the Taliban, in the power vacuum created by the death of powerbroker Ahmed Wali Karzai. “Now we know that three people were killed and 15 injured in today’s suicide attack,” said Kandahar governor Toryalai Wesa. The provincial authority and a national lawmaker said a number of high-ranking government officials had been present but were not hurt. “We’d left the mosque to go to a hall nearby for lunch. The government delegation left 10 minutes before the explosion,” said lawmaker Kamal Naser. Kandahar senator Bismullah Afghan, however, was wounded in the shoulder, his brother said. An AFP reporter saw the government delegation rapidly evacuated after the attack in two Afghan army helicopters. The head of the religious council for the southern province of Kandahar, Hikmatullah Hikmat, was among those killed, the interior ministry said.
