Twin Afghan shrine blasts kill 58, injure more than 150

Twin blasts at Afghan shrines on the Shiite holy day of Ashura left at least 58 people dead on Tuesday, a day after an international meeting in Germany on furthering efforts to end the Afghan war. "A suicide bomber detonated his explosives in the Abu-ul Fazil shrine," Kabul police said in a statement. A security official speaking on condition of anonymity told AFP that it was believed the bomber arrived with a group of Shiite pilgrims from Logar province, south of Kabul. Shiites were banned from marking Ashura in public under the Taliban who ruled Afghanistan until 2001. This year, there are more Ashura monuments around the city than usual including black shrines and flags. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for either of the blasts from the Taliban or other insurgent groups operating in Afghanistan. The attacks came shortly after a major conference on Afghanistan s future, held in the German city of Bonn, 10 years after talks there which put in place an interim government after US-led troops ousted the Taliban. However, Pakistan and the Taliban - both seen as pivotal to any end to the bloody strife in Afghanistan -- decided to stay away from the talks, undermining already modest hopes for real progress. The 10-day Ashura ceremonies, which began on November 27 but peak on Tuesday, mark the slaughter of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, near Karbala by armies of the caliph Yazid in 680 AD. Tradition holds that the revered imam was decapitated and his body mutilated. His death was a formative event in Shiite Islam. Sectarian violence periodically flares between Shiites, who beat and whip themselves in religious fervour during Ashura, and Sunnis, who oppose the public display of grief. On Monday, at least 28 people were killed and 78 wounded in a wave of bomb attacks in central Iraq against Shiite pilgrims making their way to Karbala.