Film protest claims 12 more lives as bomber targets Nato staff

Yesterday’s early morning blast was the first to target Kabul since a video clip of the film was posted on the internet last week, sparking protests across the Muslim world.

It was also the second – and deadliest – attack in Afghanistan that militants have said they carried out as revenge strikes in response to the film.

A spokesman for the Islamist militant group Hizb-i-Islami claimed responsibility for the attack saying it was carried out by a 22-year-old woman named Fatima. Suicide bombings by women are extremely rare in Afghanistan – and few if any women drive cars.

“The anti-Islam film hurt our religious sentiments and we cannot tolerate it,” the spokesman said.

“There had been several young men who wanted to take revenge but Fatima also volunteered and we wanted to give a chance to a girl for the attack to tell the world we cannot ignore any anti-Islam attack.”

He warned of more attacks against foreigners working for Nato.

The bombing was an escalation of violence in the capital, where most attacks are usually blamed on the Haqqani network – a Pakistan-based militant group affiliated with the Taliban and al-Qaida.

Eight of the dead were South Africans believed to be working for an aviation company based at Rand Airport in Johannesburg.

Four Afghans also were killed and another 11 Afghan civilians were wounded.

The blast came a day after hundreds of Afghans burned cars and threw stones at a US military base in the capital in a demonstration against the film.

Hizb-i-Islami is headed by 65-year-old former warlord Gubuddin Hekmatyar – a former Afghan prime minister and one-time US ally who is now listed as a terrorist by Washington. The group is a radical Islamist militia with thousands of fighters and followers across the country’s north and east.

The group has recently been seeking to participate in a so-far fruitless peace and reconciliation effort led by Afghan president Hamid Karzai.

Its more moderate parts are thought to have close ties to the Karzai administration and offered a peace plan that called for a broad-based government.