The Times
Jerome Starkey in Kabul

The bodies lay mangled in a circle, twisted and torn. Some were caked in blood and dust, others clean. A few were heaped together and hard to tell apart, others lay alone.

All around them was the debris of violent death: limbs, viscera and fragments of bone; sandals, hats, and a yellow plastic bag spilling powdered milk towards a lifeless, punctured hand.

At least 55 people were killed at a Kabul shrine yesterday and more than 130 wounded in the deadliest single attack since 2008. It was the first to target Afghanistan’s Shia minority since the fall of the Taleban ten years ago.

Another blast in the north of the country was also aimed at Shias. Officials said that four people were killed and 21 wounded by a bicycle bomb, close to the Blue Mosque in Mazar-e Sharif. Police said the victims were part of a procession chanting slogans to mark Ashura, the holy festival which commemorates the death of Imam Hussein, the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson. A second device was defused.

The wounded in Kabul staggered dazed, sometimes tripping through the carnage. Others could not move. A woman lay trapped on her back after the blast broke her legs. She reached up, without words, beseeching help. Survivors wailed and first-aiders barked out orders amid corpses of young children. The mosque’s loudspeakers continued to blare out prayers.

In the centre of the circle there was a darkness on the road, a starburst of charred tarmac which marked the spot where the suicide bomber unleashed mayhem. Afghan officials blamed the Taleban, but the insurgents denied responsibility. In a statement, the Taleban said the attacks were “inhumane” and they blamed “foreign invaders”.

Shia leaders urged calm but the attacks have raised fears of a sectarian backlash and further inflamation of the ethnic fractures that fuelled a civil war in the 1990s. Mohammad Mohaqiq, a member of parliament and an influential Shia leader, said that whoever perpetrated the attack was trying to ignite a civil war. He urged his supporters to maintain “civil order”.

Sectarian attacks are unusual in Afghanistan, but similar atrocities have ravaged neighbouring Pakistan.

The Kabul bomber set off his explosives in a tightly packed crowd outside the Abul Fazl shrine on the banks of the river, where hundreds of people, including women and children, had gathered to mark Ashura.

Witnesses said the explosives were hidden in a backpack and the bomber was posing as a mourner among Shia devotees clamouring at the entrance to the shrine to pay their respects inside.

Moments after the blast, hundreds of people fled screaming.

Ambulances arrived from civilian hospitals and a nearby military base. As shock turned to rage, survivors began chanting anti-Pakistani and anti-US slogans. Pakistan is widely blamed for helping the Taleban-led insurgency while many believe the violence is the fault of American military intervention.

President Karzai said it was “the first time that on such an important religious day in Afghanistan, terrorism of that horrible nature is taking place”. The attacks came less than 24 hours after a major international conference in Bonn on the future of Afghanistan. Nato troops are planning to stop fighting by 2014 and hope to hand responsibility for security to Afghan forces.

William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, said he was “shocked by the attacks”. The international community’s long-term commitment to Afghanistan “ will not be undermined by such acts of terrorism,” he said.

General John Allen, the commander of US and Nato troops in Afghanistan, described the bombs as an “an attack against Islam itself” and said: “We denounce and condemn these atrocities in the strongest of terms. Our prayers and deepest sympathies are with the families and loved ones of those innocent civilians killed or injured.”

The Shia minority are thought to make up 20 per cent of the country’s 30 million people. Most are ethnic Hazaras and thousands were massacred by the Taleban when they ruled the country. The Taleban are predominantly Sunni Muslims and ethnically Pashtun.