Taliban's grim reminder

Yesterday's suicide bomb on a police bus in the heart of Kabul was one of the deadliest since the Taliban was ousted from Afghanistan in 2001. The scale of the carnage ensured the kind of headlines that the Taliban has been desperate to achieve to bolster its case that the government and the Nato-led forces have lost control of the country. Although final numbers are in dispute, it seems that at least 35 people were killed, 22 of whom were police instructors, and many others injured. There can be no doubt that it was a successfully targeted attack on a bus taking police officers to their beats, with the bomber boarding when it stopped to pick up additional officers.