54 dead in Afghan shrine blasts

A total of 54 people were killed and 150 others wounded in a massive blast close to a Shiite shrine in the Afghan capital Kabul Tuesday, the country's health ministry said. "Fifty-four are dead and 150 others are injured," said health ministry spokesman Ghulam Sakhi Kargar Noorughli. Twin blasts at the shrines on the Shiite holy day of Ashura left scores dead in Kabul and the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif on Tuesday. A massive blast at the entrance to a shrine in central Kabul where Shiite Muslims had gathered to mark Ashura left at least 30 people dead including children, an AFP photographer saw. "A suicide bomber detonated his explosives in the Abu-Ul Fazil shrine," Kabul police said in a statement. A security official speaking on condition of anonymity told AFP that it was believed the bomber arrived with a group of Shiite pilgrims from Logar province, south of Kabul. Separately, four people were killed in Mazar-i-Sharif when another blast struck a shrine in the northern city. It was not immediately clear whether Shiites were targeted in that attack. "It was an explosion not a suicide bombing. It was some explosives hidden in a bicycle," said Lal Mohammad Ahmadzai, a police spokesman for northern Afghanistan, adding that four other people had also been injured. Shiites were banned from marking Ashura in public under the Taliban who ruled Afghanistan until 2001. This year, there are more Ashura monuments around the city than usual including black shrines and flags. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for either of the blasts from the Taliban or other insurgent groups operating in Afghanistan. The attacks came shortly after a major conference on Afghanistan's future, held in the German city of Bonn, 10 years after talks there which put in place an interim government after US-led troops ousted the Taliban. However, Pakistan and the Taliban -- both seen as pivotal to any end to the bloody strife in Afghanistan -- decided to stay away from the talks, undermining already modest hopes for real progress. The 10-day Ashura ceremonies, which began on November 27 but peak on Tuesday, mark the slaughter of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, near Karbala by armies of the caliph Yazid in 680 AD. Tradition holds that the revered imam was decapitated and his body mutilated. His death was a formative event in Shiite Islam. Sectarian violence periodically flares between Shiites, who beat and whip themselves in religious fervour during Ashura, and Sunnis, who oppose the public display of grief. On Monday, at least 28 people were killed and 78 wounded in a wave of bomb attacks in central Iraq against Shiite pilgrims making their way to Karbala.