Watch for the outraged condemnations and demonstrations by Muslim groups worldwide. But don’t hold your breath. “Huge truck bomb kills 12 schoolchildren as ‘spectacular’ attack by Taleban goes awry,” by Tom Coghlan for the Times Online, July 9 (thanks to all who sent this in):
Taleban militants detonated a huge truck bomb south of the capital Kabul this morning killing 25 people, including 12 primary school children, according to local officials.
However, officials said they suspected the device was detonated prematurely after the truck crashed and had been intended for a “spectacular” attack on a target in Kabul ahead of presidential elections in August.
The blast in Mohammad Agha district of Logar Province, on the main route into Kabul from the south of the country, was powerful enough to throw pieces of the vehicle more than a mile, one local police official said.
“The blast has left 25 people dead,” Zmarai Bashiry, an Interior Ministry spokesman, told The Times.
“21 of the dead are civilians and four are policemen. Three nearby shops have been completely destroyed.”
Abdul Hamid, the district governor of Mohammad Agha, said that 12 of the dead were children attending a boy”s primary school close to the scene.
The police chief of Logar, Mustafa Khan, said that he believed that the truck was intended for a target in Kabul.
Officials said that the truck, which also contained a cargo of timber, appeared to have suffered a mishap and rolled into a stream at some point during the hours of darkness. When police arrived to clear the obstacle at 7am the insurgents detonated it remotely….