Blast at Indian Consulate in Eastern Afghanistan
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Most of the Victims in Attack Were Children.
A bombing outside the Indian consulate in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad on Saturday killed nine people and injured 21, most of them children, in the first major attack in the country since the beginning of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan.
Three suicide attackers drove a car laden with explosives into a checkpoint that led to the consulate, but failed to breach the compound, said Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, spokesman for the provincial government.
Police stopped the car at the checkpoint, triggering a short gunbattle before the car exploded. Police said all casualties, except for one wounded policeman, were civilians, mostly children.
No Indian officials were killed or wounded in the blast, said Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin. He added that New Delhi had received prior intelligence of a possible attack on the Jalalabad consulate.
“We had a team which had gone some time ago to assess the situation,” and they reached the conclusion “that there could be an attack,” he said.
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