Suicide bomber hits Kabul bus as attacks escalate

KABUL, June 17 (Reuters) A Taliban suicide bomber blew up a police bus in the Afghan capital today killing around 35 people, police said, in apparently the single deadliest bombing to hit Afghanistan since the Taliban were ousted in 2001.

The blast tore apart the bus, wrecked several other vehicles and scattered body parts in the heart of the city.

''More than 35 are killed,'' said Ali Shah Paktiawal, chief of the Kabul police's criminal branch. ''Police officers are among the dead.'' An Interior Ministry official could not confirm the death toll, saying around 30 were dead or wounded.

The Interior Ministry said five of the wounded were foreigners, including two Japanese, a Korean and two Pakistanis. Earlier reports that foreigners had been killed proved false.

If the death toll is confirmed, this would be the deadliest suicide attack to hit the country since US-led forces drove the Taliban from power, and appears to signal an escalation of such strikes.

At least 14 people were killed in four other suicide bombings over the past three days. Responsibility for all five attacks was claimed by Taliban insurgents who want to overthrow Afghanistan's Western-backed government and drive out foreign troops.

The previous deadliest bombing in Kabul, in 2002, killed 26 people.

A police eyewitness at the scene, outside the Kabul police chief's headquarters, said he had seen the bomber leap on to the bus as it it was moving slowly away, its door wide open.

''It was a very, very successful suicide attack,'' a Taliban commander, Mullah Hayatullah Khan, told Reuters by satellite phone. ''We have plans for more successful attacks in future.'' The Taliban and their al Qaeda allies have adopted the tactics of Iraq's bloody insurgency to try to dispel the notion that government and foreign security forces are in control of the country.

CHAOS AT HOSPITAL Eighteen bodies, mostly police officers, and 10 wounded had been taken to nearby Jamhuriat Hospital, a doctor there said.

There was chaos at the hospital, where a crowd gathered to check if relatives and friends were among the dead and injured.

Doctors set up a triage ward in the hospital's front yard.

The body of a police officer lay on the grass, shrouded in a sheet and surrounded by blood-soaked garments. A male relative wailed into a mobile phone, while friends tried to console him.

The bomb exploded during the morning rush hour, at a time when buses are ferrying police officers to their beats.

The spate of suicide bombs follows claims by Afghan, NATO and US-led coalition forces to have subdued the insurgents in an aggressive spring campaign against Taliban strongholds in the south and east.

On Friday and Saturday there were four suicide attacks in the south, centre and north of the country, including a blast in Kabul yesterday. At least 14 people were killed in those attacks, including a Dutch soldier.

REUTERS SW KP1556