Car bomb kills 41 in Afghanistan
Pakistan says it didn't attack Indian Embassy
Pakistan Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani said that his country has no interest in destabilizing Afghanistan.
Gilani spoke Tuesday during a visit to Malaysia.
The suicide car bomber followed a diplomat's vehicle and detonated the explosives at the building's main entrance, only 30 yards from where dozens of Afghans had lined up to apply for visas. The blast was the deadliest in Kabul since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. Nearly 150 people were wounded.
Women and children browsing nearby shops were among the victims who lay on the ground, bloodied and in agony, crying for help. Debris covered the pavement, including sandals, a wrecked bicycle and heaps of twisted metal.
The embassy is on a busy, tree-lined street near Afghanistan's Interior Ministry that is protected on both ends by police, though the checkpoints are easily driven past. The 8:30 a.m. explosion rattled much of Kabul and kicked up gray dust that shrouded the bodies of the dead and enveloped the survivors.
The Afghan Interior Ministry hinted that the attack was carried out with help from Pakistan's intelligence service, saying the blast happened "in coordination and consultation with some of the active intelligence circles in the region."
The bombing showed that Afghanistan is also a theater for the struggle between longtime rivals India and Pakistan.
"These attacks seem designed to sabotage any improvement of relations between Pakistan and either of its two neighbors, India and Afghanistan, to assure that Pakistan has no alternative but to continue to support militant organizations as part of its foreign policy," said Barnett Rubin, an Afghanistan expert at New York University.
At Kabul's hospitals, anguished parents railed against the Afghan government.
"Where is the security?" cried Mirwais, a father of four who knew that two of his children had been killed. Before heading to another hospital to search for his other two children, he shouted obscenities at Karzai.
Moments later, a woman ran outside screaming, crying and hitting her face with both hands. Her son and daughter had been killed. "Oh my God!" the woman screamed. "They are both dead!"
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