Car bomb blast kills 7 in Kabul

KABUL, Afghanistan – A powerful car bomb was detonated outside the office of a U.S. security contractor in the Afghan capital Sunday, killing at least seven people, including two Americans, and wounding several others, officials and witnesses said.

Hours earlier, a blast wrecked a religious school in southeastern Afghanistan, reportedly killing at least eight children and one adult and underlining the country’s fragile security as it moves toward its first post-Taliban election in October.

Security officials have issued several warnings in recent weeks about possible car bombings and suicide attacks in Afghanistan’s capital. NATO forces patrolling Kabul have warned that anti-government militants, including the ousted Taliban, could try to mount spectacular attacks in a bid to disrupt the landmark presidential election scheduled for Oct. 9.

The Kabul explosion hit the office of Dyncorp Inc., an American firm that provides security for Afghan President Hamid Karzai and works for the U.S. government in Iraq, said Nick Downie of the Afghanistan NGO Security Office.

“The explosion … killed at least seven people,” Karzai’s office said in a statement. “Two Americans, three Nepalese and two Afghan nationals, including a child, have been confirmed dead.”

Karzai and U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad expressed shock at the bombing.

An American embassy statement said the contractor also was involved in a project to train Afghan police, a key element of the internationally backed plan to prevent the country from reverting to a haven for al Qaeda militants.

The company is believed to employ Nepalese and Americans in Afghanistan, where it reportedly is involved in anti-drug efforts.

Dyncorp Inc. is a division of Computer Sciences Corp. based in El Segundo, Calif. CSC spokesman Mike Dickerson said the Dyncorp office was hit by “an apparent car bombing.”

The Dyncorp building burned fiercely after the explosion, which blew out the windows of surrounding houses.

Reporters saw the mutilated body of one man lying in the street before Afghan police and foreign security guards pushed them back at gunpoint.

Emergency workers ferried the victims to a hospital in ambulances and picked body parts from the street.

Residents said a boy living in a neighboring house and a cobbler in a nearby stall were killed, and as many as eight other people were wounded.

On Saturday night, an explosion ripped through the Mullah Khel religious school near Zormat, 80 miles south of Kabul, in southeastern Paktia province. Eight children between the ages of 7 and 15 were killed, and 15 other people were injured, three of them critically, said Paktia Gov. Asadullah Wafa.

But U.S. Master Sgt. Ann Bennett said nine children and one adult were killed, and several other people were wounded. The differing death tolls could not immediately be explained.

The U.S. military, which sent medics to help after the blast, said the cause was unclear.

Wafa said a bomb was planted on a second-floor balcony by “puppets listening to their bosses outside the country.”

He did not elaborate, but his remark appeared aimed at neighboring Pakistan, which many Afghans accuse of not doing enough to prevent Taliban militants from mounting cross-border attacks.

The school received funding from an international aid group, Wafa said, which could have made it a target for Taliban-led militants.

The school also was used to register voters for the elections – a process which Taliban militants vowed to disrupt.