Afghan blast kills four U.S. troops; cleric survives attack

KABUL, Afghanistan — A roadside bomb killed four U.S. troops passing by in an armored vehicle in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, the deadliest attack on coalition forces in a month.

In Kabul, a suicide bombing Sunday killed two people and narrowly missed the chief of Afghanistan's upper house of parliament, and he accused Pakistani intelligence of trying to assassinate him.

The two bombings were the latest in a series of militant attacks that appear to be gathering intensity four years after the ouster of the hard-line Taliban regime by a U.S.-led invasion.

The four U.S. troops died while patrolling in the Pech Valley in Kunar province, military spokesman Col. Jim Yonts said. Kunar Gov. Asadullah Wafa said the roadside blast went off as a convoy of six U.S. vehicles passed.

Sunday's bombing raised the death toll of U.S. military personnel in the region to 220 since a U.S.-led offensive toppled the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in late 2001. It was the deadliest attack since Feb. 13, when a roadside bomb killed four U.S. troops in central Uruzgan province.

Also Sunday, a car bombing in the capital targeted Sibghatullah Mujaddedi, a Muslim cleric who briefly served as president in 1992. He now heads the upper house of parliament and leads a commission encouraging Taliban fighters to reconcile with the government.

Mujaddedi escaped with burns to his hands and face, but two bystanders — a girl on her way to school and a man on a motorbike — were killed. Two attackers who drove the explosives-laden station wagon into the convoy also died.

"The explosion was very strong. For a while I couldn't see anything. I was in the front seat of my car. I saw a big fire came toward me," the white-bearded Mujaddedi told a news conference a few hours later.

His hands were wrapped in bandages — burned when he raised them to protect his face from the blast.

The bloodstained road was littered with parts of the attackers' car.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the bombing as "an attack on the voice of Afghanistan and clerics of Afghanistan." He did not blame anyone outright but said he had received information two months ago of a plot to "attack important personalities in Afghanistan."

Mujaddedi directly accused Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency for the bombing. He offered no proof.

"We have got information that ISI of Pakistan has launched a plan to kill me," he said.

Islamabad dismissed Mujaddedi's charge. "Pakistan rejects the baseless allegations," Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said.

The accusation likely will aggravate deteriorating relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan.