KABUL: A powerful bomb ripped through a police bus in the Afghan capital today killing up to 35 people, police said, in one of the deadliest attacks in the city since the Taliban regime was toppled in 2001.
Police officials gave different death tolls after the blast, with the city's criminal investigation department chief Alishah Paktiawal saying 35 police officers and bystanders were killed.
This would make it the deadliest rebel attack in Afghanistan since the fundamentalist Taliban regime was driven from power and started an insurgency that relies on terror tactics similar to those used by extremists in Iraq.
The Kabul police chief General Esmatullah Dauladzai said, however, that 21 people were killed and 24 wounded, including five foreign nationals.
"Among those wounded were two Japanese, a Korean and two Pakistani nationals who were perhaps passing by the area when the explosion took place," he said.
"There are indications that the bomb was placed inside the bus but we will investigate further," he said.
The 45-seater bus, which had been taking officers to a police training academy, was reduced to a skeleton of blackened and mangled metal. Body parts and bits of human flesh were flung across a wide area.
The blast struck outside the police headquarters in a crowded part of the city centre that is near a busy market. Two minibuses were damaged nearby and witnesses said bystanders may also have been hit.
Paktiawal first said that the bomb was inside the bus but later said it may have been a suicide bombing.
"We are investigating. We don't know if it was a suicide bombing or an explosion inside the bus," he told reporters at the scene.
"It is the work of terrorists, Al-Qaeda and murderers of the people," Paktiawal said.
The sirens of ambulances wailed across the city as the wounded were ferried to hospitals.
"Over 30 wounded have been admitted to Kabul hospitals," said ministry of health spokesman Abdullah Fahim.
His initial reports put the death toll at more than 25.
The insurgent Taliban movement, which is allied with Al-Qaeda, claimed responsibility. "It was a suicide car bomb," spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said.
The attack comes a day after a suicide car bomb blast in the west of the city killed three people, in the fifth such bombing inside Kabul this year.
The extremist movement has been waging an insurgency for the past five years that sees regular suicide blasts and other attacks.
There have been several other attacks on police buses in the capital with the fledgling police force regularly attacked by Taliban insurgents throughout the country.
The force has been trained by Germany, and the European Union is due to take over training this month.
"The police are the tip of the spear in Afghanistan's fight against the Taliban so the Taliban would like very much to set back police training," said US Major Sheldon Smith from a section of the US-led coalition training Afghan forces.
"The Taliban want to roll back all the progress that has been made here," he said.
The United Nations mission in Afghanistan said it was still collecting details about the blast.
