Kabul, June 13: Barely a week after a suicide bomber killed German peacekeepers in Kabul, police found and defused a remote control bomb planted on a busy road in the capital, the police chief said today. The bomb, hidden in a spent shell in a western neighbourhood of Kabul, was defused late yesterday by Afghan officers with the help of peacekeepers from the International Security Force (ISAF), police chief Basir Salangi said. Some 5,000 peacekeepers patrol the capital.

Yesterday, Afghanistan's interior ministry said suicide bombers were being trained to target foreign soldiers in the troubled nation.

Last weekend four German soldiers and one afghan civilian were killed when a suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden car into a bus carrying German peacekeepers to the airport in Kabul. Another 29 German peacekeepers were wounded in the explosion.

Afghan and international forces blamed al-Qaeda operatives, as well as Taliban fugitives and allies like renegade rebel leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
No arrests have been made either in the weekend bombing or in connection with the remote control bomb found yesterday.

"Those who do not want peace in Kabul were behind it," Salangi said. "We're investigating and we will find these people who are trying to destabilize our country."


Witnesses in the western neighbourhood of Kabul said that the spent tank shell concealing the explosive devise was lying on a road across from a technical school. There were no international peacekeeping camps in the area.
Bureau Report