US condemns bombing outside Indian embassy in Kabul

Afghan investigators inspect the site of a suicide car bomb near the Indian Embassy in Kabul

The United States condemned Thursday a massive suicide car bombing outside the Indian embassy in the Afghan capital of Kabul by Taliban militants.

The fifth bold attack on Kabul in two months comes as President Barack Obama's administration reviews strategy for Afghanistan amid calls for more US troops and warnings that the Taliban insurgency is gaining momentum.

"The United States condemns the bombing today near the Indian embassy and Ministry of Interior in Kabul that has killed several people and wounded many more," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters.

"There's no justification for this kind of senseless violence. Our thoughts and sympathies are with the families of those who lost their lives in the attack," he added.

The US embassy in Kabul issued an identical statement condemning the attacks.

It was the fifth audacious assault on the Afghan capital in two months, as the Taliban brings its intensifying anti-government insurgency to the most heavily fortified part of the country.

The car bomb struck outside the Indian embassy in Kabul on Thursday, killing 17 people and injuring 63 more, most of them civilians, in an attack claimed by Taliban militants.

In a statement on their website, the Islamist insurgent group said that one of their "martyrs" had carried out the attack in a heavily fortified diplomatic area, and said the Indian embassy "was the main target".

India is Pakistan’s archrival, and militant groups once nurtured by Pakistan’s intelligence service have struck at Indian targets, most recently last year in Mumbai.

But it was too early to tell who was behind Thursday’s bombing, which served as a reminder of the reach of Afghanistan’s insurgency. The heavily guarded area was reopened to traffic only recently, having being closed for months after the previous bombing, which killed 54.

Indian authorities said no embassy staff members were hurt, but three guards outside had been wounded.

Thursday’s bombing occurred around 8:30 a.m., when a man driving a sport utility vehicle slowed down near a side wall of the embassy, said Sayed Abdul Ghafar, a senior police official in Kabul. Soon after, the driver detonated his explosives, partly destroying a guard tower and an outer protective wall.

The American Embassy condemned the attack. “There is no justification for this kind of senseless violence,” it said in a statement.

In a grimly familiar pattern, most of the dead were ordinary Afghans, many of them merchants at a market that had been refurbished in recent months. Shop owners swept broken glass and crushed geraniums into small piles on the sidewalk.

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