Death toll up to 68, two arrested in attack

Sixty eight civilians have been buried, a hundred more are wounded, and countless questions remain. The provincial police chief Gen. Abdul Rahman Sayed Khail said two suspects had been arrested; these men apparently ordered women to leave the area shortly before the blast.

Alix Kroeger of the BBC gives voice to what many of us are wondering…

Another puzzling aspect of the Baghlan bombing is the sheer number of people killed, making it the deadliest such attack in Afghanistan's history. Put bluntly, most suicide bombings here kill only the bombers themselves.

There are still some people who believe, partly because of the devastating death toll, that it was not a suicide bomb at all. Forensic investigators are now at work in Baghlan, but it will be some time before their findings are released.

I have no special knowledge here, but count me among the skeptics. Have you ever seen this level of carnage from a single suicide bomber? Virtually all of the massive attacks in Iraq have been from vehicle bombs or pre-positioned explosives. That's not to say that the bombing was not from the Taliban, but there are some key details missing. MORE

One thing we do know is that at least some of the injuries occurred from gunshot wounds after the bomb detonated. It remains unclear whether these were part of the attack; more likely they were fired during the panic that ensued.

The notion that forensic data will give us any kind of conclusion is optimistic at best (the bodies are already in the ground...) And in the absence of a credible explanation, stories spread like wildfire.

Hekmatyar is the obvious candidate given his presence in the region and his past use of suicide bombers. But the government is a frequent antagonist, as Burhanuddin Rabbani (the leader of the United National Front) hinted in a statement to an Afghan TV station: "There is a question why the provincial officials were not with their parliamentarian guests”. Today the UNF was busy organizing anti-government protests...

With its scriptwriters are on strike, Hollywood may want to scour Kabul for some local talent. Apparently there are all sorts of plotlines circulating (each, I imagine, presented as cold fact.) Thanks to Josh Foust's contact at Registan for this comment:

There are various ideas flying around town at the moment. One that has come into currency today, and that is just about believable, is that the attack was carried out (in some way) by members of the United National Front, who have been observed visiting schools and mosques etc today calling on people to go out on the streets to protest against the government. It would seem a big step to take out your spokesman to further your own movement, but I wouldn’t put it past them. Kabul is increasingly a stage built for these kinds of moves...this event has the potential to mushroom into something ‘big.’