U.N. finds Afghan bodyguards fired on crowd after bombing

As many as two-thirds of the 77 people killed and 100 wounded in a recent suicide bombing were hit by bullets from the guns of panicked bodyguards, who fired on a crowd of mostly schoolchildren for as long as five minutes, a preliminary United Nations report says.

Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry said only a “small number” of the victims were hit by gunfire, but an Afghan official in Baghlan province told the Associated Press that visiting lawmakers’ bodyguards were “raining bullets” on the crowd.

The bomb contained ball bearings, the Interior Ministry said, which may have caused holes similar to bullet wounds.

A doctor who treated patients after the Nov. 6 blast, however, said a high-ranking government official told him not to reveal the number of gunfire victims.

U.N. investigators have uncovered conflicting information about the number of people hit by gunfire and are trying to reconcile the differences, said two Western officials who have seen the internal reports. The two spoke on condition they not be identified because the findings were preliminary.

One said that “a large number of people -- and quite probably a majority -- were killed and wounded as a result of gunfire after the blast.” The official said one report is highly critical of the bodyguards’ reaction.

Among the dead were 61 students and five teachers, said Education Ministry advisor Hamid Almi. Hundreds of children crowded onto the tree-lined driveway leading to the New Baghlan Sugar Factory to greet the lawmakers when the bomb went off.

Six members of parliament and five bodyguards also died. Previously, the deadliest suicide bombing in Afghanistan was in June, when 35 people were killed in an attack on a police bus.

On Saturday, a series of clashes in southern Afghanistan left 43 suspected militants dead, while a roadside bomb killed two NATO soldiers and their translator, officials said. Their nationalities were not disclosed.