Blasts across Afghanistan target Shi'ites, 59 dead

hereyago

A suicide attack killed dozens of Shi'ite Muslims at a crowded Kabul shrine on Tuesday, and four others died in a smaller blast in a key northern city, in the worst sectarian violence Afghanistan has seen since the fall of the Taliban.

The Kabul bomb was the deadliest in the capital since 2008, and punctured any lingering sense of optimism from a conference on Monday where Western allies made firm but not specific promises to support Afghanistan after troops leave in 2014.

Bodies and blood were scattered down a street in the heart of old Kabul where a crowd of hundreds had gathered to mark the festival of Ashura, with chanting, and self-flagellation. At least 55 were killed and 160 wounded, some critically.

"This is the first time on such an important religious day in Afghanistan that terrorism of that horrible nature is taking place," Afghan President Hamid Karzai told journalists in Germany, where the conference on Afghanistan's future was held.

reply to post by ICEKOHLD


and here it is again...more bloodshed...more bombings.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks in Kabul and northern Mazar-i-Sharif. The Taliban strongly condemned the bombings and blamed "invader enemies."

whoever set this off was really trying to piss someone off...

Maybe the Afgan "president" should go back to Afghanistan and listen to his people on how to rebuild the country instead of asking the likes of Germany/US/EU/NATO on which Oil giant get's which plot......

"The spokesman of a Pakistani militant group, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, claimed responsibility for the attacks in reports broadcast by Radio Free Europe in Pakistan and by the BBC’s Pakistan service."

"Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is a Punjabi group with a long history of cooperation with Pakistani’s intelligence service, as well as close ties to Al Qaeda and the Taliban. It is made up of Sunni extremists who believe in the extermination of Shiites and has helped drive the rampant sectarian violence between Shiite and Sunni groups in Pakistan."

www.nytimes.com...

reply to post by Deetermined


thanks for that info!

didn't take long for someone to claim credit.

The "west" at one time had a maximalist society where religion was pervasive in most, if not every, aspect of life and culture. When disagreement arose, religious wars ensued and many were killed. As a result, the society became minimalist and pushed religion into its own privatized section of the society in order to put a lid on the religious violence.

The west is now trying to mold maximalist, middle eastern societies into minimalist states, and the reason it isn't quite sticking is because it's trying to skip years of social evolution.

I don't think the religious violence will stop until they get burned out on it and change their own society.