Sawt Falasteen - Afghanistan vows to avenge deadly Kabul bombing but says open to talks

On a rainswept hillside above Kabul, Afghan Red Crescent Society volunteers carried dozens of simple wooden coffins from a fleet of ambulances to a mass grave dug in the rocky ground by giant excavators.

At the graveside, Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani said they were innocent victims targeted by "criminals", days before the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

"Today is a sad day. I offer my condolences to Afghanistan, especially to the families of the martyrs," he told mourners.

"We will take revenge," he added and warned those behind Monday night's bombing: "We are not weak and helpless. You will see the consequences of your crimes."

But Haqqani, who until last year had a $10-million US bounty on his head, also suggested that talks were the government's preferred option to halt the fighting.

"We do not want war but the situation has come to this," he said. "So, we are trying to solve the problems through diplomacy."

The Taliban authorities have said that around 400 people were killed and more than 200 wounded in Monday's strike -- the deadliest yet in escalating violence between the two neighbours.

Islamabad, which denies deliberately bombing the centre, accuses Kabul of harbouring extremists behind cross-border attacks on its territory. Afghanistan denies doing so.

At the funeral, there was heavy security but no visible signs of any family members, according to an AFP team at the scene.

Interior ministry spokesman Abdul Mateen Qani said the ceremony was for identified victims, and some had been sent back to their home provinces for burial.

Identification of other victims was still ongoing, he added.

- Identification -

Obtaining immediate independent confirmation of exact death tolls is difficult in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with attacks often in hard-to-reach places and conflicting information.

AFP journalists at the scene on Monday evening and Tuesday morning saw at least 95 bodies extracted from the rubble at the devastated centre.

Jacopo Caridi, the Afghanistan country director for the Norwegian Refugee Council, a humanitarian NGO, said they also had teams on the ground.

"From what we saw and what we discussed with the others involved in the (emergency) response, we can say that there were hundreds of killed and wounded," he told AFP.

Recovery of bodies has proved difficult because of the debris and collapsed structures and Caridi described the scene as "shocking", which would make identification more difficult.

"In Europe, we have the systems to identify the people, even from body parts," he added.

"But here, I don't know if they have these systems. But what I saw was a finger in one place, a foot in another place, a hand in one location. It was really horrific," said Caridi.

- Mediation stalled -

Afghanistan and Pakistan have faced calls for an immediate end to the conflict, with the overall civilian death toll mounting and concern about those displaced.

The UN said before Monday's strike that at least 76 Afghan civilians had been killed in the fighting, and that more than 115,000 families had been forced from their homes.

Mediation efforts, however, have so far proved fruitless.

The focus of Gulf countries, which led early attempts, has shifted to the situation in their own backyard since the start of US-Israeli strikes on Iran last month.

Before Monday's strike, China had dispatched a special envoy to mediate between Afghanistan and Pakistan, pledging to play a "constructive role in de-escalating tensions".

Russia's special representative for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, has said Moscow "will be ready" to help diplomatic efforts to stop the fighting "if both sides simultaneously turn to it with a request for mediation".

"So far, this has not happened," he told pro-Kremlin outlet Izvestia.

E.Qaddoumi--SF-PST