A suicide bomb ripped through the gates of the Indian Embassy on July 7, killing 41 people and injuring many more, and scattering bodies and blood across some of Kabul's most protected streets. Afghanistan quickly blamed India's archrival Pakistan while Pakistan condemned the attack.

An Afghan policeman walks among the dead and wounded at the site of a suicide attack near the Indian Embassy in central Kabul on July 7. AP PHOTO

The suicide car bomber followed a diplomat's vehicle and detonated the explosives at the building's main entrance, only 30 meters from where dozens of Afghans had lined up to apply for visas. The blast was the deadliest in Kabul since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

Women and children browsing nearby shops were among the victims who lay on the ground, bloodied and in agony, crying for help.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the bombing and said it was carried out by militants trying to rupture the Afghan-India friendship.

The Afghan Interior Ministry hinted that the attack was carried out with help from Pakistan's intelligence service, saying the blast happened "in coordination and consultation with some of the active intelligence circles in the region."

Pakistan Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi said his country condemned the attack and terrorism in all forms.

"These attacks seem designed to sabotage any improvement of relations between Pakistan and either of its two neighbors, India and Afghanistan, to assure that Pakistan has no alternative but to continue to support militant organizations as part of its foreign policy," said Barnett Rubin, an Afghanistan expert at New York University.