Bomber Kills 41 at Indian Embassy in Afghanistan

A suicide bomber drove into the Indian embassy in Kabul, killing 41 people and wounding about 140, in the deadliest attack in the Afghan capital since the 2001 fall of the Taliban. .The attack provided further evidence of the increasing instability in the central Asian nation, where a NATO coalition recently has seen an increase in insurgent activity almost seven years after invading. It will also add to tensions in the region, as neighboring Pakistan also has seen a resurgence in violence. Later Monday in the Pakistani coastal city of Karachi, one person was killed and dozens injured in a series of seven bomb explosions. Police said the blasts were of low intensity and the bombs were placed in slum districts in the city. No one claimed responsibility. On Sunday in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, a suicide bomber killed 20, including 18 police officers. There was no indication that Monday's attacks were connected. But the escalating violence on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border -- a lawless, porous, mountainous area -- may prompt renewed calls from North Atlantic Treaty Organization officials for Pakistani security forces to do more to prevent the movement of militants from Pakistan into Afghanistan. In Kabul, many of those who died in the bombing were Afghan citizens collecting Indian visas. In recent years, there has been an influx into India of Afghans seeking to escape the turmoil in their homeland. The Indian embassy's military attaché and a political counselor also were killed, along with two Indian guards. The Taliban, which governed Afghanistan until it was deposed by NATO forces for harboring al Qaeda in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S., have carried out a wave of suicide attacks across Afghanistan. But a spokesman denied any involvement in Monday's attack. "We have not done it," spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed said. Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai accused "enemies" of the good relationship between Afghanistan and India, one of Afghanistan's staunchest allies. "Such acts of terror will not deter us from fulfilling our commitments to the government and people of Afghanistan," the Indian government said. In Islamabad, police continued to search for clues to Sunday's blasts, which some speculate may be tied to the one-year anniversary of the government's siege of the Red Mosque in Islamabad, which had been seized by militants. No one has claimed responsibility. "The crisis we are going through at this time, it is so serious that, if we do not control ourselves, it can get even more serious and perhaps we may not be able to control it then," said Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, one of the key U.S. allies in the fight against Islamist terrorism.