AT LEAST 17 people, including children, died in two explosions within 24 hours in Kabul yesterday and on Saturday at a religious school in a south-eastern province of Afghanistan.

The Taleban militia claimed responsibility for the Kabul bombing, which a spokesman for President Karzai said had killed two Americans, two Afghans and three Nepalis in front of the offices of an international security company.

Abdul Latif Hakimi, a spokesman for the Taleban, said that the bomb was detonated by a Taleban fighter using a remote control device.

“A few minutes ago he phoned our chief to say that he finished his mission and is alive,” he said.

The Taleban was ousted from power by a US-led alliance in late 2001 and is now waging a campaign of violence to disrupt Afghanistan’s first presidential elections on October 9.

The blast in the Shar-i-Naw area of Kabul, where dozens of aid agencies are located, injured an unspecified number of other people and destroyed several vehicles.

Afghan police cordoned off the site of the explosion as ambulances arrived in the area to transfer injured people to hospital, witnesses said.

Earlier, nine children were killed when an explosion ripped through a school in the Paktia province. The blast happened as children were attending an evening class at the religious school on Saturday. One teacher also died.

The area has been racked by violence. Officials said that the bomb had been planted by “puppeteers listening to their bosses outside the country”.

The remark was apparently aimed at Pakistan, where many Taleban and al-Qaeda leaders are living in hiding, while directing attacks inside Afghanistan.

American military officials said yesterday that they were still investigating the cause of the explosion. Military medical teams went to the wrecked school to help to evacuate the wounded, including a badly injured eight-year-old boy, to Salerno, a nearby American base.

The Mullah Khel School near Zormat in Paktia is an Islamic school but it also teaches the more modern syllabus set by the Afghan Education Ministry.

Moreover, it received funding from an international aid group, something that could have made it a target for militants, and the premises were also used by the group for teaching Afghan women, a practice forbidden under the former Taleban regime.

Taleban fighters have launched a series of attacks against aid workers and organisations in recent months in an attempt to bring development to a halt and undermine the Government’s efforts to rebuild the country.

The area where the school is located is well-known for Taleban activity and sympathy. The Shah-i-Kot Mountains, just east of Zormat, were the scene of Operation Anaconda two years ago, the last large-scale fighting against Taleban and al-Qaeda remnants before they regrouped to fight a guerrilla-style war.

Almost a thousand people, including militants, Afghan and American soldiers, civilians, foreign and Afghan aid workers and election officials, have been killed in the past year.

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