As many as 12 people were killed nearKabul’s airport Tuesday when a suicide car-bomber rammed into a mini-van full of aviation workers, police said. A Pakistan-based militant group said it carried out the attack to avenge a YouTube video that defames the Prophet Muhammad, the Washington Post reports.
Nine of the victims were foreigners – five of them South African — saidKabulpolice official Gen. Mohammad Zahir. He said the blast also killed the van’s Afghan driver and two persons on the busy road, which serves as an access route to the heavily fortifiedKabulInternationalAirport.
The bomber was a youngKabulwoman, according to Haroon Zarghhon, a spokesman for Hezb-i-Islami (Party of Islam), which asserted responsibility for the attack. Hezb-i-Islami is a maverick jihad group sometimes allied with the Taliban that also has members serving in the Afghan government.
The van belonged to the international delivery company DHL, according Zahir, the head of the police criminal investigation department.
