Afghan Volleyball Bombing Kills 57

Local Editor

A suicide bomber people at a volleyball tournament killed at least 45 in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, officials said.

The bomber detonated his explosives as hundreds of young men and boys attended a tournament in the volatile province of Paktika on Sunday.

Sunday's attack occurred on the same day that the Afghan parliament approved military agreements allowing foreign troops to remain in the country past the end of the year. Some 10,000 mostly US troops will now stay on.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan's intelligence agency blamed the blast on the Haqqani network, a hardline militant group aligned with the Taliban.

Paktika provincial spokesman Mukhlis Afghan said in a statement that the death toll from Sunday's blast had risen to 57 after 15 people died of their injuries overnight.

Deputy spokesman for the interior ministry, Najib Danish, said four local police were among the fatalities, but they did not appear to have been specially targeted.

Doctor Seyawash, head of health services at the hospital in Kabul, told reporters that about 12 victims were in a critical condition, explaining that the injuries were mostly sustained from ball bearings packed in the bomb.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team