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KABUL — The suicide bomber who detonated his vehicle at the gates of the Indian Embassy in Kabul intended to destroy the embassy itself, the Indian ambassador to Afghanistan said Wednesday.
Ambassador Jayant Prasad also said the death toll from Monday's bombing had risen to 58, up from 41, after several people died of their wounds. Prasad said several school-age children who attend classes near the embassy were among the dead. The Education Ministry confirmed that eight school children died.
“It is our reconstruction of events that the intention of the attacker was to detonate the device within the premises of the embassy and destroy the embassy,” Mr. Prasad told The Associated Press.
A review of the bomb scene showed that one of the embassy guards killed in the blast still had his hand on the closed gate. The guard likely hadn't opened it because he saw a suspicious car driving close behind an embassy vehicle, Mr. Prasad said.
Locals run away from the scene of a suicide attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul on Monday. (Reuters)
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“The suicide attacker then decided to explode his device outside rather than inside, so the maximum impact was taken by the (sand-filled blast) barriers,” he said. “So the damage to the embassy wasn't structural.”
The blast barriers were installed in the last several weeks, Mr. Prasad said, because “we were expecting trouble.”
Mr. Prasad said the embassy was attacked because of projects India is carrying out in Afghanistan. India has spent $750 million in aid since 2001, Mr. Prasad said.
One of India's key projects is the building of a road in southwest Afghanistan that will give the country access to ports in Iran. The road will allow commerce to bypass seaports in southern Pakistan that Afghan trade must now use.
That road project is due to be completed next week.
“We were targeted because we are doing certain things in Afghanistan for the social and economic development of Afghanistan, and some elements, some people, don't want us to do what we are doing here,” Mr. Prasad said without elaborating.
Barnett Rubin, an expert on Afghanistan at New York University, noted in a Web posting this week that there has been a pattern of attacks on Indian road construction teams in southwest Afghanistan.
“These teams are constructing a road linking Afghanistan to the Persian Gulf via the Iranian rail and road network, which would bypass both Karachi and Pakistan's new port in Gwadar,” Rubin wrote. “This road also passes through the Baluch parts of Afghanistan and Iran, next to the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, where Pakistan charges India with supporting nationalist/separatist insurgents.”
Another major Indian project is the building of electrical transmission lines and substations to bring electricity from Uzbekistan to Kabul.
The ambassador refused to speculate on who might have been behind the attack — the deadliest bombing in Kabul since the 2001 fall of the Taliban. But he said the embassy noted with interest the statements from President Hamid Karzai's office putting the blame on a regional intelligence agency, interpreted as a clear reference to Pakistan.
Early accounts “are pointing in one direction,” Mr. Prasad said. “We are waiting for the further investigations to confirm or not to confirm that.”
