KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- A bomb from a suicide attacker tore through a mosque during Wednesday's funeral for a Muslim cleric opposed to the Taliban, killing at least 20 people, and the local governor said an al-Qaida-linked militant was responsible.\nThe dead included the police chief of the capital, Kabul. At least 42 people were wounded.\nThe attack further raised fears that militants here were copying the tactics of insurgents in Iraq.\nPresident Hamid Karzai condemned the assault as an "act of cowardice by the enemies of Islam and the enemies of the peace of Afghan people," and he ordered a high-level investigation.\nThe militants themselves have suffered a heavy price, according to American and Afghan officials.\nKandahar Gov. Gul Agha Sherzai said the suicide bomber's body had been found and he was part of Osama bin Laden's terror network.\n"The attacker was a member of al-Qaida. We have found documents on his body that show he was an Arab," Sherzai told reporters. "We had an intelligence report that Arab al-Qaida teams had entered Afghanistan and had been planning terrorist attacks."\nHe did not elaborate.\nKandahar was a stronghold of the hard-line Taliban regime that was ousted from power in late 2001 by U.S.-led forces for harboring bin Laden.\nThe British Broadcasting Corp. reported that it received a call from a man claiming to be a Taliban member who said the movement was responsible for the attack. It did not identify the caller or say if the report had been verified.\nA purported Taliban spokesman, Mullah Latif Hakimi, said in a telephone call to The Associated Press that the group was not responsible for the bombing.
Hakimi often calls news organizations, usually to claim responsibility for attacks on behalf of the Taliban. His information has sometimes proven untrue or exaggerated, and his exact tie to the group's leadership is unclear.\nHundreds of mourners were crowded inside the Mullah Abdul Fayaz Mosque in Kandahar, the country's main southern city, when the bomb exploded at about 9 a.m., leaving blood and body parts littered over a wide area.\nInterior Ministry spokesman Latfullah Mashal said the capital's police commander, Gen. Akram Khakrezwal, was killed along with other police officers attending the funeral. Khakrezwal had been the police commander in Kandahar.\nMashal said it was a suicide bombing.\nKandahar's deputy police chief, Gen. Salim Khan, said the explosion occurred near where people remove their shoes before praying.\nNanai Agha was inside the mosque at the time of the blast but survived because he was behind a wall when the bomb detonated.\n"I was knocked unconscious by the blast," he said. "When I woke up, so many people were killed or wounded. People were running around, some were lying on the ground crying. Dead bodies were everywhere."\nNazir Ahmadzai, a doctor at Kandahar Hospital, said 20 people were killed and 45 wounded. The hospital's director, however, said 72 people were wounded, four gravely.\n"The wounded are telling me that a suicide attacker entered the mosque and then blew himself up," hospital chief Mohammed Hashim Alokozai said.\nMashal, the Interior Ministry spokesman, denounced the attack as an atrocity against both the nation and Islam.\n"They are the enemies of peace and the enemies of Islam," he said. "Attacking Muslims while they are offering prayers and performing religious ceremonies is completely against Islam, against our country."\nCol. James Yonts, the U.S. military spokesman in Afghanistan, said the attack was an "atrocious act of violence upon innocent civilians and a mosque."\nMany local leaders had been expected to attend the funeral of Mullah Abdul Fayaz, the top Muslim leader in the province, whom the mosque is named after.\nFayaz, a Karzai supporter, was shot and killed in Kandahar on Sunday by suspected Taliban gunmen.\nEven before the blast, security was tight. Afterward, more police were deployed around the mosque, the main city hospital and other sites around the city.\nIn a second attack Wednesday, a bomb exploded on a bridge west of Kandahar as a group of Afghan deminers were driving over it, killing two and wounding five others, said Patrick Fruchet, spokesman for the U.N. Mine Action Center for Afghanistan.\nThe seven were working on a project funded by the Japanese government, he said.\nKandahar has been targeted by bombs in the past.
