Afghan Blast Described as Accident

A preliminary investigation indicates that a deadly warehouse explosion that destroyed dozens of homes on the outskirts of this eastern Afghan city was an accident and not an act of terrorism, the foreign minister said Saturday.

The head of the construction company that owned the warehouse said the building housed explosives for road building.

Foreign Minister Abdullah, meeting with reporters in Kabul, the capital, said authorities would look at what negligence may have been involved in Friday’s blast. “There might have been some mistakes in maintaining the amount of explosives that were kept in reserve in that building,” he said.

Reports on the death toll varied widely Saturday. Afghan national television reported 25 dead late Friday; hospital officials and police said 14 had been killed. In addition to the dead, about 90 people were injured.

Abdullah’s statements followed 24 hours of speculation among police and military officials that the warehouse might have been blown up by terrorists to damage a nearby hydroelectric dam and the Jalalabad power system. The speculation reflected the nervousness about terrorism in post-Taliban Afghanistan.

The midday blast destroyed about 50 houses and damaged the power system of the Darunta hydroelectric dam, just 200 yards from the warehouse, knocking out city power until early Saturday.

All that remained of the Afghan Construction and Logistics Unit warehouse was piles of brick and machinery.

Houses in all directions were leveled or burned by the blast. The explosion also blew out windows and doors at a nearby Jalalabad University building.

The company director, Mohammed Karim, said the facility housed 20 pounds of a manufactured explosive, Vibox--seemingly too little to cause such devastation. But he also said an unspecified amount of urea, a fertilizer material that can be used to make explosives, was stored there.