Bicycle bomber kills three ahead of Kabul conference

KABUL - A suicide attack in eastern Kabul killed at least three civilians and left 45 injured Sunday, officials said - two days before a major international conference in the capital.

The bomber on a bicycle detonated his explosives in Makroryan Char, a residential area close to the Kabul international airport, Abdul Ghafour Sayedzada, a senior police official said.

“Three civilians, including a child were killed and 45 other civilians, including women and children were injured in the attack,” Gholam Sakhi Kargar, spokesman for the Ministry of Public Health said.

Most of the victims were students coming out of a school when the attack took place, Kargar said, adding that the injured were evacuated to three hospitals in the city.

Witnesses said that a NATO military convoy was the target of the attack, but NATO spokesman General Joseph Blotz said there were no casualties among the alliance soldiers.

“I saw two NATO vehicles passing by,” Ahmad Sakhi, a 37-year-old shopkeeper said. “After one minute there was a big explosion.”

The attack came amid tight security for a key international gathering, dubbed the Kabul Conference. Thousands of Afghan security forces were deployed to various parts of the city to avoid a potential attack on the conference.

More than 70 international representatives, including US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and nearly 40 other foreign ministers, are expected to attend the one-day conference, which is expected to transfer more aid money and responsibility to the Afghan government.

“The insurgents have chosen to use violence to gain media attention, once again at the expense of innocent Afghan civilians,” Colonel William Maxwell, a NATO military official said in a statement.