Guards shot children dead after Afghan suicide blast, says UN
Many of the children who died in Afghanistan's worst-ever suicide attack were
actually shot dead by bodyguards who fired indiscriminately into the crowd after the blast, a UN report said.
The department of safety and security report, which was obtained by the Associated Press, said it was not clear how many people died in the bombing or from the gunfire immediately after the attack on November 6 in Baghlan province.
Sixty-one children, five teachers, six MPs and five bodyguards died in the attack. Ninety-three other children were injured, some critically.
One estimate said up to
two-thirds of the 77 people killed and more than 100 wounded were hit by gunfire; other estimates put the numbers shot much lower.
"Regardless of what the exact breakdown of numbers may be, the fact remains that a
number of armed men deliberately and indiscriminately fired into a crowd of unarmed civilians that posed no threat to them, causing multiple deaths and injuries," the report said.
"It is believed that
at least 100 rounds or more were fired into the crowd with a separate group of school children off to one side of the road bearing the brunt of the onslaught at close range," it added.
Adrian Edwards, the UN spokesman in Afghanistan, said the report was one of several conflicting views inside the UN and that its findings had not been endorsed.
"What you are seeing at the moment represents part of the picture only," he said. "What hasn't been resolved is that there is widely diverging, contrary views on this, and until those have been resolved, there is no complete finding."
The UN report said bodyguards opened fire into the crowd for several minutes.
"It has been confirmed that eight of the teachers in charge of this group of school children suffered multiple gunshot wounds, five of which died," it said.
The report said that further inquiries "are being hampered by restrictions on witnesses and officials, and that despite several arrests, there have not yet been any reports of who is responsible". According to the Afghan authorities, most of the casualties resulted from the suicide attack. The interior ministry spokesman, Zemeri Bashary, had said most of the victims were hit by ball bearings in the bomb, and not by bullets.
The children, all boys aged between eight and 18 from the same school, had gathered to welcome a visiting delegation of MPs to a sugar factory outside the town of Pul-i-Khumri, 90 miles north of the capital, Kabul, in a region which has remained largely peaceful.
Hundreds of children had crowded on to the tree-lined drive leading to the factory. Witnesses and survivors described guards firing into the thick black smoke for up to five minutes after the attack.
Among the MPs was Sayed Mustafa Kazimi, the chief spokesman of Afghanistan's only opposition group, the National Front.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Afghan officials said they do not know who was behind the bombing. The Taliban denied responsibility.
The deadliest previous suicide bombing in Afghanistan took place in June, when 35 people died in a bomb attack on a police bus.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanista...213549,00.html