Afghan president confronts Pakistan

KABUL, Afghanistan -- President Hamid Karzai confronted Pakistan yesterday, saying a militant group based there was behind a suicide bombing at a Shia shrine in Kabul that killed 56 people during commemorations of a holy day.

Pakistan, already under U.S. pressure to do more to battle extremism, countered by demanding that Karzai provide evidence to back up his claim.

"We do not discuss such matters through media," Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit said, adding that Pakistan would encourage Kabul to share any evidence it has that the group in Pakistan was responsible.

Wednesday, meanwhile, 19 people, including five children, were killed and six others wounded when a roadside bomb struck a minibus in Helmand's Sangin district, a Taliban stronghold. Tuesday's attack in Kabul was Afghanistan's first major sectarian assault since the fall of the Taliban regime a decade ago. It raised fears the conflict is taking a dangerous new turn with some militant groups targeting ethnic minorities such as the Hazara, who are largely Shia and support the Afghan government and its Western partners.

A man claiming to be from Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al-Alami, a Pakistan-based splinter group of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi that has carried out attacks against Shia Muslims in Pakistan, has called various media outlets to claim responsibility for the Kabul bombing.

Karzai said he believed this claim but did not elaborate.

"We are investigating this issue and we are going to talk to the Pakistani government about it," Karzai told reporters as he visited a hospital where scores of people who had been wounded in the attack were being treated. He said the attack was not just an act of hate against Muslims, but against mankind. An American citizen was among those killed.

Pakistani military spokesman Gen. Athar Abbas dismissed any suggestions that Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has links to the country's intelligence agencies or that the government was not doing everything it could to quash the group.