A suicide blast tore through a crowd watching a dog fight in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar yesterday, killing 80 people, a governor said, in the deadliest attack since the 2001 fall of the Taliban.
Officials blamed the extremist movement for the explosion, which reverberated across the city, but the group did not immediately claim responsibility.
Bodies and bloodied limbs lay among Afghan caps, turbans, boots, shawls and mobile phones -- some of them ringing -- after the explosion in an open area on the outskirts of the city, a reporter said.
The blast ripped up several police vans parked at the site, where some men and boys were crowded around a fighting arena while others sat nearby having a picnic. At least one large fighting dog was also killed.
"This suicide attack was the work of Taliban, the enemies of Afghanistan," provincial Governor Asadullah Khalid told a press conference shortly after the attack.
Khalid said that 60 bodies were taken to Kandahar's main Mirwais hospital and 20 to other hospitals.
"Lots of people have been wounded -- since they have been taken to different hospitals, we don't have a precise figure at this time," he said.
More than 500 people had gathered yesterday for the dog-fighting competition, said Abdul Karim, a fan of the popular winter pastime which the 1996 to 2001 Taliban government banned as "un-Islamic."
"Fighting had just started between two dogs. Suddenly I heard a huge explosion next to a police vehicle. Then I saw lots of people dead and wounded. I counted over 40 people on the ground dead," he said.
Police rushed to the scene as civilian cars, police cars and ambulances ferried out the wounded. A police officer who asked not to be identified said he had helped to evacuate more than 50 dead and wounded.
Witnesses said the attack bore the hallmarks of previous bombings carried out by the Taliban.
But a spokesman for the group, Yousuf Ahmadi, said he could not yet comment on the blast.
In another insurgency-linked incident, several Taliban rebels and an Afghan soldier were killed in a gun battle in the eastern province of Kunar near the border with Pakistan on Saturday, the defense ministry said yesterday.
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