Attacks Threaten New Afghan Conflict

Reuters

A man carries a wounded boy after a blast targeting a Shiite Muslim gathering in Kabul.

By DION NISSENBAUM And HABIB KHAN TOTAKHIL
WSJ

KABUL—Suicide bombings in Kabul and the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif targeted Afghanistan's minority Shiite community, killing more than 60 people in one of the war's deadliest attacks and infusing the 10-year-old conflict with the threat of sectarian strife.

The attacks on Tuesday, the first major blast to target Afghanistan's Shiites since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, stoked concerns that insurgents were trying to reignite the ethnic and sectarian violence that ravaged Afghanistan during the civil war in the 1990s, as the U.S. prepares to end combat operations by 2014.

"This is new," said Kate Clark, a senior analyst at the Afghanistan Analysts Network, an independent, Kabul-based think tank. "It doesn't fit into anyone's traditional mode of operation."

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