The powerful blast, for which the Taliban claimed responsibility, killed seven Afghan civilians and wounded 91 more. The bomb went off outside NATO headquarters just after 8:30 Saturday morning, the beginning of the Afghan workweek. It sent a plume of smoke visible around Kabul and knocked out glass windows more than 500 feet away.

The attackers managed to get past at least one police checkpoint to enter a zone that includes the NATO compound and the US Embassy. Insurgents appear to be targeting the capital to create high-profile shocks seen around the country, the aim being to sow doubt about the safety of turning out to vote Thursday.

“No one can guarantee our lives if we take part in the elections,” says Sher Mohammad Faqiri, a driver who works near the scene. His colleague, Noor Sherzai, helped carry three wounded people off the street. “This is the safest area in Kabul. I don’t know if I will attend elections.”

The nation’s security forces have developed a three-tiered strategy for securing approximately 7,000 voting centers on Thursday. The plan is that police will check voters as they enter, while Afghan National Army forces stand as backup. The final backstop will be NATO forces, which will be based some distance away, but close enough to respond rapidly. But it is unclear if each polling station will actually have that level of protection.

While these three forces are supposed to be in close coordination, an incident at Saturday’s blast calls that into question. About an hour after the blast, the police chief charged with securing the elections in Kabul arrived on scene. Gen. Sayed Abdul Ghafar Sayed Zada, whose regular job is as chief of the criminal investigation department with the Kabul police, stepped under a security cordon tape stretched across the scene. An investigator at heart, he first bent down to pick up a small scrap of paper he saw lying on the street and looked it over.

When he rose, he was intercepted by representatives of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). He explained who he was, but got the response: “We don’t care who you are; now it’s under control of ISAF.”

“That’s just atrocious COIN [counterinsurgency],” says Tim Lynch, an Afghanistan-based security expert referring to counterinsurgency. “You’ve got a new general here talking COIN. And in the manual they have written themselves, it would absolute mandate close coordination with that guy.”

Mr. Lynch adds that the execution of this car bomb was superior to previous insurgent efforts in Afghanistan.

Across the country, there’s doubt that every voting center will be able to open, given the insecurity. The Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan estimates that 14 of the country’s 368 districts will be too insecure to send independent election monitors. An additional 130 fall into a questionable category.

Most of these troubled districts lie in the Pashtun-dominated south and east of the country. While Kabul has enjoyed relative security, the city police understand that the Taliban will be targeting it in an effort to undermine the image of the election in the eyes of the world.

Bomb in Kabul targets NATO headquarters, near US Embassy

The government said the attack in a high-security area where a police headquarters, emergency services building and a military intelligence office are located, was revenge for an offensive against the Taliban in the Swat valley, northwest of Islamabad.

The army moved against the militants in the Swat region late last month after the Taliban had seized a district only 100 km (60 miles) from the capital and a peace pact collapsed.

A militant commander loyal to Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud said the Lahore attack was to avenge the offensive in Swat.

“We have achieved our target. We were looking for this target for a long time. It was a reaction to the Swat operation,” the commander, Hakimullah Mehsud, told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location.

Militant violence in nuclear-armed Pakistan has surged since mid-2007, with numerous attacks on the security forces, as well as on government and Western targets.

The violence and a perception the government was being distracted by political squabbling and failing to act to stop the Taliban had alarmed the United States and other Western allies.

Pakistan is vital for U.S. plans to defeat al Qaeda and cut support for the Afghan Taliban and the United States has been heartened by the Swat offensive and by public support for it.

“The response by the military so far has the support of the Pakistani people,” White House National Security Adviser General James Jones said in Washington on Wednesday.

“The government’s popularity has shot up a little bit in the polls and that is going to have an effect in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan,” he said.

“MAJOR ATTACKS”

But militant attacks in cities could undermine support for the offensive and Hakimullah Mehsud warned of more violence.

“We want the people of Lahore, Rawalpindi, Islamabad and Multan to leave those cities as we plan major attacks against government facilities in coming days and weeks,” he said.

The military released late on Wednesday what it said was a tape of an intercepted telephone call between the Taliban spokesman in Swat, Muslim Khan, and an unidentified militant in which Khan urges revenge attacks.

“There’s a need for them to strike soldiers in Punjab so that they can understand and feel pain,” Khan says on the tape, broadcast on Pakistani television.

“Strikes should be carried out on their homes so their kids get killed and then they’ll realize,” he said.

The unidentified man said militants had been ordered to strike wherever they could.

The government has vowed to defeat the Taliban and on Thursday it published an offer of a reward of 5 million rupees ($60,000) for the capture, dead or alive, of the Taliban leader in Swat, Fazlullah, and smaller bounties for 20 of his comrades.

Authorities have warned that militants might launch attacks in retaliation for the offensive in Swat, where the military says about 1,100 militants and about 60 soldiers have been killed. There has been no independent confirmation of those estimates.

Soldiers had made progress in securing Swat’s main town of Mingora, with a commander saying 70 percent of it had been cleared and the remainder would be secured in two or three days.

The offensive has sparked an exodus of 2.3 million people, according to provincial government figures, and the country faces a long-term humanitarian crisis which could also undermine public support for the fight against the Taliban.

But the securing of Mingora would raise the possibility of many of the displaced beginning to go home.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik said after the Lahore attack that the militants were on their last legs and getting desperate.

The car bomb brought down a government ambulance service building and damaged a nearby office of the military’s main Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.

Two ISI officers and six other agency officials were among the dead and security officials said their office might have been the target.

Lahore is capital of Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous and prosperous province. The country’s second-biggest city is also traditionally home to top bureaucrats and senior military brass.

The city has seen several bomb attacks over the past couple of years, but it felt much safer than other parts of the country until March, when militants launched two brazen assaults.

Bombs in Pakistan’s Peshawar, several casualties

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Tariq Hayat , the chief administrator of the region close to the Afghanistan border, told Geo TV that “so far we have counted 48 bodies.”

Residents said that about 250 to 300 worshipers were in the mosque at the time of the attack and that the death toll could rise sharply.

“It was a suicide bombing,” Mr. Hayat said. The bombing came as President Obama prepared to announce his new strategy to bolster American forces in Afghanistan and for the first time set benchmarks for progress in fighting Al Qaeda and the Taliban in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Quoting witnesses, Mr. Hayat said the bomber had mingled with the congregation and blown himself up as prayers were about to begin.

Mosques across the Islamic world are especially crowded on Fridays and the scale of the attack dwarfed other recent attacks in the region.

One survivor, who uses only the name Arman, said that just as a cleric began to intone the words “God is great,” we heard a powerful explosion. There were blood and limbs all around. I had never seen such a horrendous scene in my whole life.”

The blast brought the roof of the two-story building tumbling onto the first floor ceiling, which collapsed, residents said.

Mr. Hayat blamed the militant group Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan for the explosion.

“Their aim is to spread terror and any place where they cause maximum casualties is a legitimate target for them,” Mr. Hayat said in a telephone interview. Tehrik-i-Taliban is a militant group headed by Baitullah Mehsud, whose forces are battling the Pakistani Army in increasingly large swaths of the country. Its training camps have recently been attacked by American drones.

The mosque was about 12 miles from Peshawar on the main highway between Afghanistan and Pakistan which is used as a principal supply route for NATO and American forces in Afghanistan.

The mosque was often used by worshippers passing by on the main highway.

After the attack, dozens of bodies were taken to a hospital in the neighboring town of Jamrud, while relatives removed others for burial, residents said.

Among the dead were 10 police officers and four paramilitary soldiers from a nearby checkpoint but Mr. Hayat denied they could have been the target.

Many of the dead were civilians, including children, with a handful of local security forces among them, residents reported.

Television news footage from the attack showed men in long robes and white skullcaps standing atop a wall overlooking the wreckage of the mosque and carrying corpses from the debris. A minaret with a loudspeaker jutted from the rubble and other people clawed through rubble seeking bodies or survivors.

Initial reports did not indicate any claim of responsibility for the attack, which came as news emerged that Taliban leaders in Pakistan had agreed to close ranks with their Afghan counterparts to confront a planned increase of 17,000 in the number of American troops in Afghanistan.

The United States also plans to send an extra 4,000 soldiers to train Afghan security forces. The increases will bring the overall American deployment in Afghanistan to about 60,000. The Times of London reported on Friday that Britain was considering sending 2,000 soldiers to support the American reinforcement, in addition to the 8,300 troops it already has in Afghanistan.

The Khyber area is known for bitter feuds between rival tribes and groups of militants.

Most of the 158 wounded were brought to the main hospitals in Peshawar. A doctor at one of the hospitals said that they had declared an emergency to deal with the high number of casualties.

Suicide Bomber Kills 48 in Pakistan

The warning came after a second attack on Wednesday hit a delegation investigating an attack on Sunday.

In Seoul, about 100 activists protested against the attacks.

On Wednesday a man walked between two cars in the Korean convoy as it was driving back to the airport in Sanaa and detonated an explosives belt.

A foreign ministry official in Seoul said the vehicles were carrying government officials and bereaved family members from their hotel in the capital to the airport.

He said no-one in the convoy was hurt although some of the car windows were shattered.

Four Korean tourists and their local guide were killed in Sunday’s attack in the city of Shibam in Hadramut – a Unesco world heritage site.

Al-Qaeda blamed

The Yemeni authorities have said al-Qaeda were behind Sunday’s suicide bombing and that 12 suspects were arrested according to Associated Press news agency reports.

Yemeni security officials quoted by the AFP news agency said they found a piece of the bomber’s identity card. It showed his address and the fact he was a 20-year-old student, they said.

There are conflicting reports about the perpetrators of Sunday’s attack in Shibam.

A local teenager went up to a group of 16 Korean tourists and posed for pictures with them as the sun set over the historic high-rise desert city. Moments later, a bomb he was carrying blew up.

Reports initially said the attacker was linked to al-Qaeda elements in Yemen, but a later report on the official news agency said he had been “tricked into wearing an explosives vest”.

The official news agency reported on Thursday the suicide bomber wrote to his mother telling her that he go on the right path and asked her to pray to Allah for him not to be jailed.

South Koreans urged to flee Yemen

It said the coalition troops were on a patrol with Afghan security forces, but did not give any further details.

Some 38,000 U.S. troops are currently serving in Afghanistan alongside another 30,000 from 40 other mostly NATO nations.

Around half the U.S. troops serve under a NATO-led force, while the rest operate under a U.S.-led coalition. Almost all troops in the coalition are American.

Many coalition troops are involved in training and mentoring Afghan security forces, especially in the south and east of the country where the Taliban insurgency is strongest.

President Barack Obama last week ordered 17,000 more U.S. troops deployed in Afghanistan to reinforce mainly British, Canadian and Dutch forces in south of the country who are locked in a stalemate with the Taliban insurgents there.

Commanders predict violence will rise in Afghanistan this year as the new troops venture into new areas of the south and try to enforce security ahead of presidential polls on Aug. 20.

Blast Kills 4 U.S. Troops, Afghan Civilian

At least 25 people were also injured in the attack in Iskandiriya, 40km (25 miles) south of Baghdad.

The blast targeted Shia pilgrims, many of whom have been travelling south to the city of Karbala to take part in an annual religious ceremony.

It is the third day of attacks on Shia pilgrims, with dozens killed in Baghdad and Mosul.

The Iskandiriya attack happened despite increased security along the route.

Religious targets

A police captain told AFP news agency that the bomber had hidden explosives under an abaya, the traditional head-to-toe black garment, and blown herself up among the crowd just after midday (0900 GMT).

Most of the dead were women and children, police said.

A doctor at Hilla General Hospital said most of the survivors had head and chest injuries, AFP reported.

Hundreds of thousands of Shia have been converging on Karbala in recent days, to celebrate Arbaeen – the end of symbolic mourning for the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Imam Hussein, whose shrine is in the city.

In past years the pilgrimage has been the target of similar attacks, blamed on Sunni extremists bent on stirring up sectarian strife.

This year has been no exception: pilgrims have been attacked in Karbala itself and in Baghdad, but this latest explosion has been the deadliest so far.

Female militants

It was a grim reminder that despite the considerable general improvement in security in Iraq there are still people out there bent on igniting sectarian passions – something many Iraqis had hoped was becoming a thing of the past, says the BBC’s Jim Muir in Baghdad.

Iraqi militants have increasingly used women to carry out suicide attacks as they are less likely to be searched than men.

In 2007, there were eight suicide attacks by women; in 2008 there were 32, the US military says. In early January, a female bomber killed at least 35 Shia pilgrims in a blast near a Baghdad shrine.

Iraqi officials arrested an alleged militant recruiter last month.

Samira Jassim allegedly recruited more than 28 women to blow themselves up in various parts of Iraq.

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iraq suicide bomb kills pilgrims

Fourteen wounded civilians were taken to the nearby Emergency Hospital and one died on the way, hospital officials said.

Six U.S. troops were also wounded by the blast, but none were killed, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan said.

A U.S. military statement said previously that two U.S. troops were killed and 12 wounded, but the spokesman said the statement was erroneous.

The bomber struck on a road lined with high concrete blast barriers that runs between the German embassy and Camp Eggers, the headquarters of a U.S. unit that trains the Afghan army and police. The presidential palace and United Nations headquarters in Afghanistan lie immediately behind Camp Eggers.

A spokesman for the U.S. force based at Camp Eggers said three soldiers had been evacuated to a military hospital at Bagram, the main U.S. base north of Kabul.

There were no Germans hurt at the embassy, a spokeswoman said.

Relatives of the dead gathered outside the Emergency Hospital. A middle-aged woman was beating her head and screaming that her son had died. Another man was crying and said his son had also been killed.

Taliban militants, fighting to overthrow the Western-backed Afghan government and drive out foreign troops, have launched hundreds of suicide attacks in the last two years, but most of the victims are Afghan civilians.

While Taliban influence has spread from their traditional heartlands in the south and east to areas closer to the capital, there were fewer attacks inside Kabul last year than in 2007 with many more police checkpoints throughout the city.

U.S. President-elect Barack Obama has pledged to make Afghanistan a foreign policy priority after he comes to office on Tuesday and is expected to approve the doubling of U.S. troops in the country from the 30,000 at present.

Kabul: Suicide bomb rocks German embassy, U.S. base – Nachrichten English-News – WELT ONLINE

The bomber hit the U.S. patrol on a busy street in Kandahar province’s Maywand district, said district chief Naimatullah Khan. American victims were taken away by helicopter, Khan said, but he could not provide a number.

Army Col. Jerry O’Hara, a U.S. military spokesman, confirmed that U.S. casualties occurred but said he could not give further details.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization said two of its soldiers died in the blast, but it did not provide nationalities. U.S. soldiers serve as part of the NATO-led force in Afghanistan.

A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, claimed responsibility for the blast in a phone call to an Associated Press reporter in southern Afghanistan.

The blast came at a time when the U.S. is rushing 20,000 American troops into Afghanistan to combat a Taliban insurgency that has sent violence to record levels.

U.S. officials have warned that the violence will probably intensify. More U.S. troops died in the Afghan conflict in 2008 than in any other year since the 2001 invasion to oust the Taliban.

The independent website icasualties.org puts the number last year at 157.

The attack also followed an allegation from Afghan President Hamid Karzai that clashes between U.S.-led troops and insurgents left 17 civilians dead this week.

The U.S. military says all 32 people killed in the fighting were militants.

In a statement Thursday, Karzai said the civilians were killed during clashes between U.S.-led troops and insurgents in the eastern province of Laghman on Tuesday.

Karzai accused the insurgents of using civilians as human shields but also criticized international forces.

The U.S. military, however, said all those killed were militants involved with a bomb-making cell.

“We held [a meeting] with local government officials after the operation, and all local Afghan leaders confirmed that all 32 killed in this operation were hostile militants,” said O’Hara, the spokesman.

Bomb hits U.S. patrol in Afghanistan – Los Angeles Times

A powerful explosion occurred before midday when a women detonated an explosive belt at a checkpoint at the entrance of the Bab al-Qeblah gate of Kadhim shrine in the Shiite neighborhood of Kadhimiyah, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The woman apparently targeted the Iranian group of pilgrims and killed 16 of them and wounded 32 others, the source said.

Earlier, the source put the toll at 37 killed and 53 others injured.

Hundreds of Shiite pilgrims gather outside the shrine, three days ahead of the climax of Ashura, the 10th day of Muharram in the Islamic calendar, which is the day of mourning for the martyrdom of Hussein Ibn Ali, the grandson of Muslims’ prophet Muhammad at the Battle of Karbala.

Female suicide bomber kills 40 people outside Baghdad Shiite shrine_English_Xinhua

The blast, which occurred around midday on Saturday, was so powerful it could be heard several kilometres away.

Qassim Attam, an army spokesman, said the explosion was in a car park used by commuters near a bus terminal in Kadhimiyah, northwest Baghdad, where people also gather at a Shia shrine on Saturdays.

It was not clear if the blast was a suicide attack and whether it was caused by a car bomb or a mortar round.

On Thursday, one person was killed and 14 others injured in another bomb attack in Kadhimiyah.

Kadhimiyah has suffered routine attacks and some of the deadliest incidents in the capital since the US-led invasion in 2003.

In a second attack on Saturday, three people were killed in Jurf al-Sakhar, on
Baghdad’s southern outskirts, as Iraqi soldiers and police were trying to defuse a roadside bomb.

Al Jazeera English – Middle East – Deadly blast hits Baghdad station