Pakistan blamed for Ashura bombing

KABUL): The Attorney General Office (AGO) on Tuesday accused the intelligence service of a neighbouring country of plotting the 2011 attack on a shrine in Kabul, where 80 people were killed.

More than 200 people were wounded when a suicide bomber hit Shiite mourners near the Abul Fazal shrine in the second police district of the capital city.

The Shiite community was commemorating Ashura Hussain on December 6, when the bomber struck.

Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, a Pakistan-based Al-Qaeda affiliate notorious for attacks on Shiites, claimed responsibility for the attack.

The attack might have been conducted by Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, but the directive was issued by neighbouring country’s spy agency, Attorney General Mohammad Ishaq Aloko told reporters on Tuesday.

President Hamid Karzai had blamed the extremist outfit for the bombing, and urged the Pakistani government to move against the group. The attack was reportedly planned in Peshawar.

Heading a probe team that included members of the National Directorate of Security (NDS), ministries of defence and interior, Cabinet Secretariat and AGO, Aloko said the people involved in bringing two bombers from Pakistan to Kabul had been detained.

One suspect, Rahim Gul from the Batikot district of eastern Nangarhar province, had transported the bombers to Kabul for 10,000 Pakistani rupees (5,420afs).

The second detainee from the Surkh Rod district of the same province, Habibullah, a car dealer who lives in the 12th police district of Kabul, was also accused of coordinating the attack.

Both detainees have confessed to their crime in a video tape obtained by Pajhwok Afghan News. Habibullah, also accused of plotting to kill a presidential advisor, Asadullah Wafa, was detained with a suicide vest and a book on making bombs, said NDS spokesman Lotfullah Mashal.

Regional spy agencies had plotted the bombing aimed at stoking the fires of sectarian violence in Afghanistan, the AG said, adding: “Although the Jhangvi group claimed responsibility, it was masterminded by some spy agencies in our neighbouring countries.”

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