30 May 2005 06:59:26 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Sayed Salahuddin
KABUL, May 30 (Reuters) - A roadside bomb exploded in Kabul on Monday, wounding five Afghans travelling in a taxi behind a vehicle carrying soldiers belonging to the NATO-led peacekeeping force, police said.
The remote-controlled bomb, attached to a parked bicycle, exploded after the NATO vehicle passed on the main road leading to the eastern outskirts of the Afghan capital, district police chief Mohammad Kabar told Reuters.
"The five people hurt were in a taxi that was travelling behind the NATO car," he said. No one had claimed responsibility and no arrests had been made, he said.
But Kabar said the blast was the work of "Afghanistan's enemies", a term often used by authorities to describe guerrillas from the former Taliban regime and their Islamic allies.
The blast happened near a bazaar on the main road, along which several bases of NATO peacekeepers are located. The road is also used by troops from a separate U.S.-led force fighting Islamic militants.
The bombing came after an overnight explosion shook the headquarters of the NATO-led peacekeepers in the heart of the city near the American embassy, residents said.
A spokesman from NATO's International Security Assistance Force said that blast was from a rocket which caused some damage but no casualties.
Kabul has witnessed periodic rocket attacks, bomb blasts and suicide attacks since U.S.-led forces overthrew the fundamentalist Taliban government in 2001.
The deadliest attack was in September 2002, when at least 26 people were killed and scores wounded when a bomb exploded on busy Kabul street.
A recent flare-up of violence has been attributed to Taliban militants in southern and eastern parts of Afghanistan after a lull during the harsh Afghan winter. Scores of militants as well as some Afghan and foreign troops have been killed.
On Sunday, videotape of Clementina Cantoni, an Italian aid worker abducted in Kabul on May 16, was broadcast by an Afghan television station. It showed her flanked by two men pointing assault rifles at her.
Cantoni's abduction has raised fresh fears among Kabul's 2,000-strong foreign community of Iraq-style kidnappings by anti-government insurgents or criminals.
Officials have said they believe her kidnappers are criminals, not Islamic militants, but they have declined to reveal their demands or say who they are.