Seven Afghan suspects held, President Karzai back in capital

Kabul (Reuters): Investigators in Afghanistan questioned at least seven suspects on Friday as they hunted for the masterminds behind an assassination attempt on President Hamid Karzai and a car bomb that killed at least 16 people.

Afghan leaders blamed Thursday's attacks, which stoked fears of a wave of violence to mark the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, on Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda movement and its Taliban allies.

An official in Kandahar city in the south, said six men had been arrested in connection with the bid to kill Karzai there the previous day.

The six men were armed when they were picked up outside the residence of Kandahar governor Gul Agha Sherzai after two gunmen opened fire on Karzai's vehicle, the official said.

Earlier accounts of the incident spoke of a lone gunman.

"They are all Afghans from Kandahar. We are investigating them. They are suspects to us and we will see what comes from them during the investigation," a secretary for Karzai's brother, Ahmad Wali Karzai, told Reuters by satellite phone from the city.

In Kabul, Interior Minister Taj Mohammad Wardak said his officials had arrested the driver of a taxi that exploded in the heart of the capital shortly before the attack on Karzai.

"The suspect is an Afghan and the driver of the taxi. The investigation is going on. He has not said anything yet to indicate that he had any link with the explosions," Wardak said, adding the blast had killed 16 people and wounded more than 150.

Commander Simon Ryan, spokesman for the Turkish-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul, told reporters the official death toll was 26. "ISAF has already raised its own security measures," he said, without elaborating.

Karzai, whose U.S. body-guards shot dead at least one gunman in Kandahar, flew back to Kabul from Kandahar on Friday. He had been in Kandahar to celebrate his brother's wedding.

Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah blamed both attacks on groups linked to al-Qaeda, which the United States accuses of launching the Sept. II attacks on Washington and New York.

The twin strikes left Karzai's transitional government looking more fragile than at any time since he took office last December after a U.S.-led coalition toppled the Islamist Taliban.

"I think on one side it is destabilizing the situation in Afghanistan," Abdullah told a briefing. "It is further evidence that the war against terror in Afghanistan is far from over." A gunman fired on Karzai's car as his convoy reached the gates of the residence of governor Sherzai.

Television pictures showed a bullet hole in a car window and another in one of the vehicle's seats. The BBC said the second bullet narrowly missed Karzai's face.

"I am safe and sound, I am fine," the president told the BBC shortly after the attack. "I expect things like that to come across the way. I've been threatened before."

Sherzai, who had been sitting by Karzai, was slightly hurt.

Mohammad Anwar, Kandahar's deputy police chief, identified the gunman as a soldier from the Kajaki area of the southern province of Helmand — a former Taliban stronghold.

"His name is Abdur Rehman. He was employed in the Afghan army less than a month ago," he told Reuters by telephone.

Police said the explosion in the taxi was preceded by a smaller explosion from a bicycle, apparently intended to draw people into the streets to add to the carnage.

"I was trying to carry a person injured in the first bomb when the bigger one happened," Mia Jan, a survivor with abdominal injuries, said on Friday at the ICRC hospital in west Kabul.

The explosion was the worst attack in the capital since Karzai took office.

Ahmed Rashid, an expert on Afghanistan, said in Pakistan bin Laden's network appeared to be stepping up its activities.