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Afghanistan in mourning
07/11/2007 11:12 - (SA)
Pul-I-Khumri, Afghanistan - Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday declared three days of national mourning after about 40 people were killed, six of them lawmakers, in the country's deadliest suicide bombing.
A mass funeral was held in the rural town of Pul-i-Khumri, about 150km north of Kabul, where the attacker targeted a crowd gathered on Tuesday to welcome a visiting parliamentary delegation.
The bodies of the six MPs, including prominent opposition figure Mustafa Kazimi, were meanwhile flown back to the capital aboard military aircraft. Karzai said they would be given a state funeral.
Two other lawmakers were wounded, a grave-looking Karzai told a press conference, announcing the mourning period and ordering all national flags to be flown at half-mast.
Most of the country's television stations abandoned normal programming on Wednesday to broadcast recitations from the Koran, religious music and analysis of the incident.
The president said he had been told that 41 people had been killed including the six lawmakers, but this toll was still being finalised.
The head of hospitals in northern Baghlan province, Yousuf Faiz, told AFP late Tuesday that 40 people were killed and 120 wounded. Most of the casualties were children, he said.
"May God save Afghanistan from pain," Karzai told reporters. "But the enemies of Afghanistan must know, whoever they are, that this land will not bow its head but will lift it more and more and more."
Taliban insurgents, often referred to by officials as "enemies of Afghanistan", have in the past three years dramatically stepped up their use of suicide bombings in a campaign against Karzai's Western-backed government.
The Taliban, allied with al-Qaeda, has denied it was behind Tuesday's attack but has before publicly rejected involvement in incidents with a high civilian toll.
- AFP
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