KABUL, Afghanistan
A bomb exploded at the gates of the Indian Embassy yesterday, killing 41 people and scattering bodies across some of Kabul's most protected streets. Afghanistan quickly said that Pakistan, India's chief rival, was responsible.
The suicide car bomber followed a diplomat's vehicle and detonated the explosives at the building's main entrance, just 30 yards from where Afghans had lined up to apply for visas. The bombing was the deadliest in Kabul since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. Nearly 150 other people were wounded.
The embassy is on a busy street near Afghanistan's Interior Ministry, which is protected on both ends by police, though the checkpoints are easily driven past. The midmorning bombing rattled much of Kabul.
President Hamid Karzai condemned the bombing and said that it was carried out by militants trying to rupture the Afghan-India friendship. He told the Indian prime minister during a phone conversation that Afghanistan would do all it could to identify the attackers.
The Afghan Interior Ministry hinted that the attack was carried out with help from Pakistan's intelligence service, saying that it happened "in coordination and consultation with some of the active intelligence circles in the region."
A spokesman for Pakistan's Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the bombing. The Pakistani foreign minister said that his country condemned the attack and all forms of terrorism.
The bombing showed that Afghanistan is also a theater for the struggle between longtime rivals India and Pakistan.
"These attacks seem designed to sabotage any improvement of relations between Pakistan and either of its two neighbors, India and Afghanistan, to assure that Pakistan has no alternative but to continue to support militant organizations as part of its foreign policy," said Barnett Rubin, an Afghanistan expert at New York University.
Six police officers and three embassy guards were among the dead.
In New Delhi, India's foreign minister said that four Indians, including the military attache and a diplomat, were killed.
The bombing also killed five Afghan security guards at the nearby Indonesian Embassy. Two diplomats were slightly wounded, Indonesia's foreign ministry said.
In Washington, the White House offered condolences to the victims.
"Extremists continue to show their disregard for all human life and their willingness to kill fellow Muslims, as well as others," said Gordon Johndroe, a White House national-security spokesman. "The United States stands with the people of Afghanistan and India as we face this common enemy."
Afghanistan has seen a sharp rise in violence from Taliban militants in recent months.
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