Kabul blast suspect arrested with Taliban pictures

KABUL: Afghan police held on Monday a man suspected of links with a Kabul suicide blast that killed 35 people, a senior officer said a day after the attack, the deadliest of the Taliban insurgency. "He had documents on him which show his links to the explosion," Kabul police investigation chief Alishah Paktiawal told AFP without elaborating. "He was filming the explosion," he said.   

The suspect's mobile telephone contained pictures of late Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah, the group's strategist who was killed in a military operation in May. The extremist Taliban vowed to avenge Dadullah's killing with a wave of suicide bombings. The group claimed that Sunday's attack in the heart of Kabul was carried out by a Taliban member who had infiltrated the police and blew himself up on the bus, which was taking police officers to work at a training academy.   

Police also said it was a suicide bombing. Paktiawal would not give more information about the arrested man, saying this would hamper the investigation. Police said on Sunday a Pakistani national had been arrested filming at the site of the blast.   

Afghan officials allege that the Taliban and its allies in the Al-Qaeda terror network are backed by Islamist circles based in Pakistan's lawless frontier tribal areas. Paktiawal said Sunday that 35 people were killed in the blast, most of them police officers and also some bystanders. He had no new figures Monday.   

Kabul newspapers condemned the blast in editorials that said the attackers were terrorists. "The victims were out making a halal (lawful) living for their families but were returned home in blood," the Islah daily said. The blast "reveals that the terrorists don't value any Afghan, Islamic or human standard," said the government-run daily Hewad.   

The bombing was the sixth suicide attack in Afghanistan in three days, with one in Kabul on Saturday killing three labourers. The successive attacks in the capital give an "alarming message" that requires the security forces to be more vigilant, the Daily Outlook Afghanistan said. "More importantly suicide bombings should not grow further in the way they are tragically common in Iraq," it said, adding that the escalation in violence may amount to the Taliban's anticipated "spring offensive."