AFGHANISTAN - Jun 1 - Suicide Bomber Kills 19 In Mosque.

The police chief of Kabul Akram Khakreezwal is among 19 people killed in a suicide bomb blast at Abdul Rab Akhundzada mosque as mourners gather to pay respects to an assassinated anti-Taliban theologian. It was the first suicide attack on a mosque in Afghanistan, a government spokesman said. "I saw bodies scattered, blood all over the place. Dead policemen were also lying there", said shop owner Kalimullah, who rushed to the mosque moments after the blast. Police and security officials said the blast was caused by a suicide bomber. Nineteen people were killed and 52 wounded, said Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Those behind the first suicide attack in an Afghan mosque were the enemies of peace, stability and Islam, an interior ministry spokesman said. The bomber wore a police uniform, several survivors said. He had walked into the crowded mosque by mingling with Khakreezwal's security men as they entered with their boss, who was from Kandahar, police said. Mourners had gathered to pay respects to Mawlavi Abdullah Fayaz who was killed on May 29 by two gunmen riding a motorcycle as he was leaving his office. In another blast, an Afghan working for an agency clearing landmines was killed and four colleagues wounded when a bomb planted on a bicycle went off as their vehicle passed in neighbouring Helmand province, an official there said. About 50 aid workers have been killed over the past two years. The Taliban see aid agencies as bolstering the rule of the US-backed government and have carried out a string of attacks on them. "WRONG DECISIONS" Kandahar doctor Hashim Alakozai, who said he had seen the mangled body of the man believed to have been the suicide bomber, said he looked like an Arab. Attacks on mosques in Afghanistan are rare, and until recent years suicide attacks were unheard of. The country has not seen the sort of rivalry between majority Sunni Muslims and minority Shiites, which in neighbouring Pakistan has resulted in numerous blasts at mosques and shrines. Kandahar was the heartland of the Taliban, who emerged from religious schools along the province's border with Pakistan in the early 1990s. Taliban attacks have been common there since US-led forces ousted the hardline Islamic militia in the aftermath of the Sep 11 attacks on the US. The US military, which commands a 18,300-strong force battling the Taliban and hunting militant leaders, condemned the attack. "Tragic events such as this only solidify our resolve that we must eradicate terrorism now", a US military spokesman said. The June 2003 attack on the same Kandahar mosque wounded about 10 people. It followed a rejection by Fayaz of a Taliban call for jihad, or holy war. "I had opposed the wrong decisions of the Taliban and that's why they carried out this blast", he said at the time. Jun 1 attack was the most serious in a spate of blasts. A suicide bomb in a Kabul Internet cafe killed three people, including a UN worker from Myanmar, in May. An American woman and an Afghan girl were killed by a suicide bomber on a Kabul street in October. A roadside bomb in Kabul on May 30 wounded seven Afghans. The Taliban claimed responsibility.