Three Held in Kabul After Blast Injures Six

An explosion wounded six people in the Afghan capital and revealed what international peacekeepers described Sunday as a clandestine bomb factory.

Police who joined North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops in investigating the blast, which happened Saturday at a residence, arrested three men, said Cmdr. Chris Henderson, a peacekeeper spokesman.

A police official identified one of the men as Mohammed Hakim, the homeowner. It was not clear whether the men were linked to any militant group.

The family living at the compound said they thought the explosives were for quarrying, said district police chief Mohammed Alam Siasi.

The blast injured three children, two women and one man, Henderson said.

Canadian troops found electrical switches, 44 pounds of explosives and 550 pounds of ammonium nitrate, a farm fertilizer that can be used to make bombs.

Violence in Afghanistan has persisted since the U.S.-led war that ousted the Taliban militia government in 2001.

On Sunday, the United Nations said a third Afghan woman died of wounds sustained in a bomb attack on women working to register voters.

The woman, named Parawana, died Saturday, a week after the attack in Jalalabad. Taliban militants seeking to disrupt the elections claimed responsibility, a U.N. spokesman said.

President Hamid Karzai has said he wants the balloting in September, but it may be delayed.

Karzai was in Philadelphia on Sunday to accept the Philadelphia Liberty Medal in a ceremony at Independence Hall.

“The Afghanistan people have sacrificed terribly to obtain freedom.... We have paid for it with our lives, and we will defend it with our lives,” he said.

The medal’s $100,000 prize will go to support Afghan orphans, he said. The award is given each July 4 by the nonprofit, nonpolitical Philadelphia Foundation to recognize leadership in the pursuit of freedom.