Suicide bomber promised $17,000 for blowing up Kabul mosque

KABUL: Afghan police presented to reporters on Thursday a man they said had confessed to agreeing to carry out a suicide attack outside Kabul's busiest mosque in return for nearly 17,000 dollars for his family.   

The man, an Afghan who grew up in Pakistan, was arrested with a suicide vest strapped to his body at a police checkpost in the eastern province of Nangarhar near the Pakistani border early this week, a police spokesman said.   

The 24-year-old, identified as Chando Gul, was caught while he was on his way to Kabul, said Zemarai Bashary, a spokesman for the interior ministry that handles police matters.   

"He has confessed his family was to receive 16,600 dollars after he carried out suicide attack at Puli-Khishti mosque in Kabul," Bashary said.   

The mosque, one of the oldest in the war-scarred capital, is popular among worshippers and adjacent to the crowded main Kabul market in the city centre.   

Gul told reporters that when he was recruited he had been working as a driver for a Pakistani national who was a Taliban and was named Mullah Gul Wali.   

"We were four people. We got an invitation from Mullah Gul Wali to carry out suicide attacks and he said doing that will take us to paradise in the next life and success in this life," said Gul.   

"We were told our family will receive 1,000,000 rupees after we carried out the attack. I was told to detonate in Pul-e-Khisti mosque," he said.   

Gul said a suicide bomber who killed around a dozen people outside the interior ministry on September 30 was a friend of his and from the same group. The blast was among about six in the capital that month that badly rattled the heavily secured city, which has seen relatively little of the Taliban violence that has raged in the south this year.   

Gul said two of his other friends were tasked to carry out attacks at the Kabul police command and in Nangarhar.   

Suicide attacks have soared in Afghanistan this year, with the tactic generally agreed to have been picked up from international militant groups.   

Afghan police allege many of the attacks are being plotted by Taliban and other militants in Pakistan, who fled across the border after the extremist regime was toppled from power in Afghanistan in a US-led offensive.