UN: Death toll in Syria unrest at least 2,600 (AP)

GENEVA – At least 2,600 people have died in the six months of unrest that has swept Syria, the U.N.'s top human rights official said Monday, as a panel was named to investigate abuses in the Arab country.

The figure released by U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay adds to evidence that Syrian leader Bashar Assad is continuing his crackdown on anti-government dissidents despite international pressure.

"According to reliable sources on the ground, the number of those killed since the onset of the unrest in mid-March 2011 in that country has now reached at least 2,600," Pillay said. She added that her office continues to be denied access to Syria.

"The situation in Syria is still dire," Pillay told reporters after a speech at the U.N. Human Rights Council.

Last month, the Geneva-based body held an emergency meeting at which it voted overwhelmingly to demand Assad's government end its bloody crackdown.

"From the time that the Human Rights Council passed its resolution and the Security Council has addressed the matter, the situation in Syria has worsened and peaceful protesters have been killed," Pillay said, adding that she was "shocked" by the rising death toll.

The council on Monday named three independent experts to lead an international investigation of allegations of human rights abuses in Syria.

They are Turkish women's rights expert Yakin Erturk; former U.N. investigator for Myanmar Sergio Pinheiro of Brazil; and Karen Abu Zayd, a U.S. citizen and former head of UNRWA, the U.N. agency that aids Palestinian refugees.

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Tanzania: At least 240 killed in ferry sinking (AP)

STONE TOWN, Tanzania – More than 240 people were killed when a crowded ferry sank off Tanzania's coast and some 600 have been rescued, officials said Sunday, figures that indicate the boat was filled beyond capacity.

Assistant police commissioner Mussa Ali Mussa, the head of police in Zanzibar, said Sunday that at least 240 people died when the ferry sank early Saturday. His comments were broadcast by state-owned channel TBC.

Relatives had claimed 192 bodies and 28 more were awaiting identification on Sunday, said Mohammed Aboud Mohammed, the minister for state in the vice president's office on the island of Zanzibar. He said around 600 people had been rescued so far and that the government was still looking for the vessel's captain.

"The government is holding the chief engineer for questioning in order to gather details," said Mohammed. "The captain of the ferry is still missing and the government doesn't know precisely the owner of the ferry."

Survivors said the M.V. Spice Islanders, which sank near the tourist destination of Zanzibar, was well beyond its official capacity of 600 passengers. Many residents angrily asked why the boat had been allowed to leave port so overloaded.

The bodies were taken to a sports field, where imams said prayers and the bodies were washed and wrapped in white according to Islamic custom. The government is paying for all funeral costs, Mohammed said.

Weeping families walked among them looking for their loved ones, falling into each others' arms if they recognized a relative or neighbor. Most of the corpses were wrapped in cloth with a photo of the face placed on the front. Some of the ship's passengers were mutilated when cargo fell on top of them when the boat began to list.

Among those still searching for news was Omar Saied, who arrived from Tanzania's commercial capital of Dar es Salaam to search for his nephew and niece, on their way to a wedding on the island of Pemba.

"I'm looking for my missing family," he said. "So far our hope has been in vain."

International charity Save the Children said it launched an emergency response for injured and traumatized children.

The charity described the "incredible bravery" of young survivors, including one 6-year-old with a lifejacket who saved his 18-month-old brother by holding on to him in the sea for four hours until they were rescued.

It said another set of brothers — aged 7 and 9 — clung to a floating freezer to stay alive.

The charity said they had been given clothes, food and clean water and that 79 out of 129 children it has cared for have been reunited with their families. The rest are in the hospital, Save the Children said.

"Children arrived at our center freezing, dehydrated and suffering from shock," said Mubarak Maman, the charity's team leader in Zanzibar. "Many had spent hours alone in the dark sea clinging onto floating luggage to stop themselves from drowning, and had lost their parents and siblings in the chaos. Others had been seriously injured or were vomiting from the sea water."

He said it was essential that the charity was there to provide crucial care and comfort, and to register the children so "none were lost in the panic."

The ferry left Dar Es Salaam loaded with building materials, mattresses and passengers, survivors said. It stopped at the island of Zanzibar and then continued on to Pemba, a top diving destination. But it began to list in the early hours of Saturday, and eventually sank in an area of deep sea and strong currents.

Most survivors drifted ashore clinging to foam mattresses or wooden planks from the ferry. Some were plucked from the water by a flotilla of pleasure craft, wooden fishing dhows and yachts which set off from the beach Saturday to search for survivors.

The number of total passengers is still unclear and officials expect the death toll to rise.

The island of Zanzibar, a top tourist destination, is observing three days of mourning. Flags are flying at half-mast and radio and television stations are playing readings of the Quran instead of music.

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Activists say Syrian troops kill at least 52 (AP)

BEIRUT – Syrian forces intensified their crackdown on an eastern city Sunday as they try to keep the anti-government uprising from escalating during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The assault and similar operations in at least two other towns killed at least 52 people, according to human rights groups, and the toll looked likely to rise.

The worst violence was in the eastern city of Deir el-Zour, where troops stepped up a siege that had already been going on for days. At least 42 people were killed in a raid on the city that began before dawn, said Abdul-Karim Rihawi, the Damascus-based chief of the Syrian Human Rights League and Ammar Qurabi, who heads the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria.

Amateur video posted online by activists showed what it said were parts of Deir el-Zour with the sound of heavy cracks of gunfire and prayers blaring from loudspeakers. Another video showed Syrian troops on a hill as they positioned an anti-aircraft gun. An activist in the city told The Associated Press the military attacked before dawn from four sides and took control of eight neighborhoods.

"Humanitarian conditions in the city are very bad because it has been under siege for nine days," the activist said on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. "There is lack of medicine, baby formula, food and gasoline. The city is totally paralyzed."

The attack on Deir el-Zour is part of the latest phase of the government crackdown that began a week ago, just before the start of Ramadan when many Muslims fast from dawn to dusk, then eat festive meals and gather in mosques for special nightly prayers. The government has been trying to prevent the large mosque gatherings from turning into a new wave of anti-government protests, like those that have been sweeping the country since mid-March.

The government's crackdown has left more than 1,700 dead, according to activists and human rights groups. President Bashar Assad's regime disputes the toll and blames a foreign conspiracy for the unrest.

Assad has defied the growing chorus of international condemnation and pressed on with lethal military force to suppress mostly peaceful, unarmed demonstrators. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon urged Assad in a phone conversation on Saturday to immediately stop the use of military force against civilians.

The central city of Hama had been the focus of the crackdown for most of the past week, though Deir el-Zour has also been under siege.

In Hama, an official at Hourani Hospital reported that eight newborns died in their incubators on Wednesday when electricity was cut in the city, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The group had no further details.

Authorities have imposed a media blackout on Hama and the reports could not be immediately confirmed. Electricity, Internet and phone lines have been cut for seven days, and residents have reported dwindling food and medical supplies amid frequent shelling and raids. Rights group say at least 100 people have been killed, while some estimates put the number as high as 250.

The military attacks also spread Sunday to the central town of Houleh in Homs province, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) south of Hama and 212 miles (340 kilometers) east of Deir el-Zour. Rihawi said at last 10 people were killed in Houleh while Qurabi said the toll was 17.

Both Houleh and Deir el-Zour have witnessed intense protests against Assad since the uprising began. Deir el-Zour is the capital of an oil-rich province by the same name, but the region is among the country's poorest and was hit by drought in the past years. It is inhabited by Arab tribes that extend into Iraq, and Syrian authorities have said they thwarted attempts by Iraqis to smuggle arms from Iraq into Syria.

Qurabi said security forces also shot and killed 10 people in the northwestern city of Idlib Sunday. He said those killed in Idlib were taking part in a funeral of eight protesters shot dead by security forces Saturday night in the city.

Rihawi had no figures from Idlib but the Local Coordination Committees, a key activist groups tracking the Syrian uprising, said at least four people were shot dead in Idlib when security forces opened fire at a funeral.

In Hama, state-run news agency SANA said troops removed all barriers and roadblocks in the main streets, but continued "to chase remains of terrorists" who took positions in two neighborhoods.

SANA claimed anti-regime gunmen in the city had killed 13 policemen whose bodies were removed Saturday from the Orontes River, which runs through Hama. An amateur video posted online by government supporters last week showed men throwing what it said were dead plainclothes policemen's bloody bodies from a bridge into the river, turning the water to a red stream.

Turkey, which borders Syria, said Sunday it would send its foreign minister to Damascus on Tuesday to deliver a strong message condemning the crackdown on the protesters. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country's patience was running thin and that Turkey could not remain a bystander to the violence.

Syria's reaction was quick. State-run TV quoted Assad's adviser, Buthaina Shaaban, as saying that Turkey's foreign minister "will hear stronger words because of Turkey's stance that did not condemn until now the brutal killings of civilians, members of military and police."

Gulf Arab countries broke their silence Saturday on the bloodshed, calling for an immediate end to the violence and for the implementation of "serious" reforms in Syria. In a statement posted on its website, the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council expressed deep concern and regret for "the escalating violence in Syria and use of excess force."

Syria's state-run TV quoted an unnamed official as saying the GCC statement was ignoring the sabotage that armed groups are conducting.

Assad again promised to pursue reforms, SANA reported, something he has promised before but failed to deliver.

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Bassem Mroue can be reached at http://twitter.com/bmroue

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At least 40 killed in Mexico in 24-hour period (AP)

MEXICO CITY – Battles between the vicious Zetas gang and other drug cartels killed more than 40 people in a 24-hour span, a government official said Saturday.

At least 20 people were killed when gunmen opened fire in a bar late Friday in the northern city of Monterrey, where the gang is fighting its former ally, the Gulf Cartel, said federal security spokesman Alejandro Poire.

Eleven bodies shot with high-powered rifles were found earlier Friday, piled near a water well on the outskirts of Mexico City, where the gang is fighting the Knights Templar, Poire said. That is an offshoot of the La Familia gang that has terrorized its home state of Michoacan.

He said another 10 people were found dead early Saturday in various parts of the northern city of Torreon, where the gang is fighting the Sinaloa cartel headed by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

"The violence is a product of this criminal rivalry ... surrounding the intent to control illegal activities in a community, and not the only the earnings that come with it, but also with transporting drugs to the United States," Poire said in a news conference.

He repeated the government insistence that the criminals, not the government's crackdown on organized crime, are causing the violence. More than 35,000 people have died since President Felipe Calderon stepped up the attack on organized crime in 2006, according to official figures. Some groups put the number at more than 40,000.

"The violence won't stop if we stop battling criminals," Poire said. "The violence will diminish as we accelerate our capacity to debilitate the gangs that produce it."

Federal authorities apprehended La Familia's alleged leader in late June, claiming the arrest was a debilitating blow to the gang. Jose de Jesus Mendez Vargas was alleged to be the last remaining head of the cartel, whose splinter group, the Knights Templar, continues to fight for control of areas La Familia once dominated.

Mexican authorities also arrested Jesus Enrique Rejon Aguilar, a co-founder of the Zetas drug cartel who is suspected of involvement in the February killing of a U.S. customs agent.

Poire provided no more details on the killings in Torreon in the border state of Coahuila.

In Monterrey, 16 people died at the Sabino Gordo bar in the worst mass killing in memory in the northern industrial city, where violence has spiked since the Gulf and Zetas broke their alliance early last year. Four others died later at the hospital and five were injured, said Jorge Domene, security spokesman for the state of Nuevo Leon, where Monterrey is located.

Other downtown businesses closed earlier than usual after news of the massacre broke.

In Valle de Chalco, a working class suburb southeast of Mexico City, a man was found alive among the dumped bodies and was taken to a hospital, said Antonio Ortega, a spokesman for the Mexico State police.

He said some of the bodies were blindfolded and had their hands tied.

State officials said police found another body nearby a few hours later but could not confirm it was related to the mass attack.

Ortega said he didn't know if the victims were shot at the scene or were taken to site.

The capital region has been largely spared the widespread drug violence that grips parts of Mexico.

But some poorer areas of the sprawling metropolis of 20 million people have begun to see killings and decapitations committed by street gangs that are remnants of splintered drug cartels.

_____

Associated Press writer Porforio Ibarra contributed to this report from Monterrey, Mexico.

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U.S. cost of war at least $3.7 trillion and counting (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) – When President Barack Obama cited cost as a reason to bring troops home from Afghanistan, he referred to a $1 trillion price tag for America's wars.

Staggering as it is, that figure grossly underestimates the total cost of wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan to the U.S. Treasury and ignores more imposing costs yet to come, according to a study released on Wednesday.

The final bill will run at least $3.7 trillion and could reach as high as $4.4 trillion, according to the research project "Costs of War" by Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies. (http://www.costsofwar.org)

In the 10 years since U.S. troops went into Afghanistan to root out the al Qaeda leaders behind the September 11, 2001, attacks, spending on the conflicts totaled $2.3 trillion to $2.7 trillion.

Those numbers will continue to soar when considering often overlooked costs such as long-term obligations to wounded veterans and projected war spending from 2012 through 2020. The estimates do not include at least $1 trillion more in interest payments coming due and many billions more in expenses that cannot be counted, according to the study.

In human terms, 224,000 to 258,000 people have died directly from warfare, including 125,000 civilians in Iraq. Many more have died indirectly, from the loss of clean drinking water, healthcare, and nutrition. An additional 365,000 have been wounded and 7.8 million people -- equal to the combined population of Connecticut and Kentucky -- have been displaced.

"Costs of War" brought together more than 20 academics to uncover the expense of war in lives and dollars, a daunting task given the inconsistent recording of lives lost and what the report called opaque and sloppy accounting by the U.S. Congress and the Pentagon.

The report underlines the extent to which war will continue to stretch the U.S. federal budget, which is already on an unsustainable course due to an aging American population and skyrocketing healthcare costs.

It also raises the question of what the United States gained from its multitrillion-dollar investment.

"I hope that when we look back, whenever this ends, something very good has come out of it," Senator Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee, told Reuters in Washington.

SEPT 11, 2001: THE DAMAGE CONTINUES

In one sense, the report measures the cost of 9/11, the American shorthand for the events of September 11, 2001. Nineteen hijackers plus other al Qaeda plotters spent an estimated $400,000 to $500,000 on the plane attacks that killed 2,995 people and caused $50 billion to $100 billion in economic damages.

What followed were three wars in which $50 billion amounts to a rounding error. For every person killed on September 11, another 73 have been killed since.

Was it worth it? That is a question many people want answered, said Catherine Lutz, head of the anthropology department at Brown and co-director of the study.

"We decided we needed to do this kind of rigorous assessment of what it cost to make those choices to go to war," she said. "Politicians, we assumed, were not going to do that kind of assessment."

The report arrives as Congress debates how to cut a U.S. deficit projected at $1.4 trillion this year, roughly a 10th of which can be attributed to direct war spending.

What did the United States gain for its trillions?

Strategically, the results for the United States are mixed. Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are dead, but Iraq and Afghanistan are far from stable democracies. Iran has gained influence in the Gulf and the Taliban, though ousted from government, remain a viable military force in Afghanistan.

"The United States has been extremely successful in protecting the homeland," said George Friedman, founder of STRATFOR, a U.S.-based intelligence company.

"Al Qaeda in Afghanistan was capable of mounting very sophisticated, complex, operations on an intercontinental basis. That organization with that capability has not only been substantially reduced, it seems to have been shattered," Friedman said.

Economically, the results are also mixed. War spending may be adding half a percentage point a year to growth in the gross domestic product but that has been more than offset by the negative effects of deficit spending, the report concludes.

COMPREHENSIVE STUDY

Some U.S. government reports have attempted to assess the costs of war, notably a March 2011 Congressional Research Service report that estimated post-September 11 war funding at $1.4 trillion through 2012. The Congressional Budget Office projected war costs through 2021 at $1.8 trillion.

A ground-breaking private estimate was published in the 2008 book "The Three Trillion Dollar War," by Linda Bilmes, a member of the Watson Institute team, and Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. That work revealed how much cost was added by interest on deficit spending and medical care for veterans.

The report draws on those sources and pieces together many others for a more comprehensive picture.

The report also makes special note of Pakistan, a front not generally mentioned along with Iraq and Afghanistan. War has probably killed more people in Pakistan than in neighboring Afghanistan, the report concludes.

Politicians throughout history have underestimated the costs of war, believing they will be shorter and less deadly than reality, said Neta Crawford, the other co-director of the report and a political science professor at Boston University.

The report said former President George W. Bush's administration was "shamelessly politically driven" in underestimating Iraq war costs before the 2003 invasion.

Most official sources continue to overlook costs, largely because of a focus on just Pentagon spending, Crawford said.

"Over the last decade, we have spent a trillion dollars on war," Obama said in last week's speech on reducing U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan. At the very least, he was rounding down by $200 billion to $300 billion, when counting U.S. congressional appropriations for the post 9/11 wars.

"I don't know what the president knows, but I wish it were a trillion," Crawford said. "It would be better if it were a trillion."

ELUSIVE NUMBER

In theory, adding up the dollars spent and lives lost should be a statistical errand. The U.S. Congress appropriates the money, and a life lost on battlefield should have a death certificate and a casket to match.

The team quickly discovered, however, the task was far more complicated.

Specific war spending over the past 10 years, when expressed in 2011 dollars, comes to $1.3 trillion, the "Costs of War" project found. When it comes to accounting for every dollar, that $1.3 trillion is merely a good start.

Since the wars have been financed by deficit spending, interest must be paid -- $185 billion of accumulated so far.

The Pentagon has received an additional $326 billion to $652 billion beyond what can be attributed to the war appropriations, the study found.

Homeland security spending has totaled another $401 billion so far that can be traced to September 11. War-related foreign aid: another $74 billion.

Then comes caring for U.S. veterans of war. Nearly half of the 1.25 million who have served in uniform in Iraq and Afghanistan have used their status as veterans to make health or disability claims at an expense of $32.6 billion to date.

Those costs will soar over the next 40 years as veterans age. The report estimates the U.S. obligations to the veterans will reach $589 billion to $934 billion through 2050.

So far, those numbers add up to a low estimate of $2.9 trillion and a moderate estimate of $3.6 trillion in costs to the U.S. Treasury. No high estimate was offered.

"We feel a conservative measure of costs is plenty large to attract attention," said report contributor Ryan Edwards, an economist who studied the war impact on deficit spending.

Those numbers leave out hundreds of billions in social costs not born by the U.S. taxpayer but by veterans and their families: another $295 billion to $400 billion, increasing the range of costs to date to some $3.2 trillion to $4 trillion.

That's a running total through fiscal 2011. Add another $453 billion in war-related spending projected for 2012 to 2020 and the total grows to $3.668 trillion to $4.444 trillion.

THE HUMAN TOLL

If the financial costs are elusive, so too is the human toll.

The report estimates between 224,475 and 257,655 have been killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, though those numbers give a false sense of precision. There are many sources of data on civilian deaths, most with different results.

The civilian death toll in Iraq -- 125,000 -- and the number of Saddam's security forces killed in invasion -- 10,000 -- are loose estimates. The U.S. military does not publish a thorough accounting.

"We don't do body counts," Tommy Franks, the U.S. commander in Iraq, famously said after the fall of Saddam in 2003.

In Afghanistan, the civilian death count ranges from 11,700 to 13,900. For Pakistan, where there is little access to the battlefield and the United States fights mostly through aerial drone attacks, the study found it impossible to distinguish between civilian and insurgent deaths.

The numbers only consider direct deaths -- people killed by bombs or bullets. Estimates for indirect deaths in war vary so much that researchers considered them too arbitrary to report.

"When the fighting stops, the indirect dying continues. It's in fact worse than land mines. The healthcare system is still in bad shape. People are still suffering the effects of malnutrition and so on," Crawford said.

Even where the United States does do body counts -- for the members of the military -- the numbers may come up short of reality, said Lutz, the study's co-director. When veterans return home, they are more likely to die in suicides and automobile accidents.

"The rate of chaotic behavior," she said, "is high."

(Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell, Missy Ryan, Brett Gering, Laura MacInnis and Sharon Reich; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

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Car bomb outside Afghan clinic kills at least 35 (AP)

By RAHIM FAIEZ and SOLOMON MOORE, Associated Press Rahim Faiez And Solomon Moore, Associated Press – Sat?Jun?25, 10:49?am?ET

KABUL, Afghanistan – A suicide bomber blew up his sport utility vehicle outside a small clinic in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday, bringing the building down on those inside, Afghan authorities said. At least 35 people were reported killed.

Would-be rescuers were frantically digging through the rubble in search of survivors trapped in the collapsed 10-bed clinic, said Mohammad Zaref Nayebkhail, the provincial health director.

The Taliban, authors of many bombings in this war-ravaged land, denied responsibility for this one. Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the movement, told The Associated Press in a phone interview that "this attack was not done by our fighters."

Health Director Nayebkhail said guards had tried to prevent the attacker from driving his SUV into the medical compound, in the mountainous Azra district of Logar province, 25 miles (40 kilometers) east of Kabul.

"The driver didn't stop and he entered the compound and reached the main building of the health center, where the truck detonated," he said.

Nayebkhail said at least 35 people were killed and at least 53 were wounded in the blast.

He said an Afghan army helicopter was dispatched to the area to deliver medical supplies and to ferry survivors to other hospitals. He said the clinic had recently been expanded to meet the health needs of the far-flung district's population.

Late Friday, another blast — this one caused by a bicycle rigged with explosives — had ripped through a bazaar in the Khanabad district of Kunduz province in northern Afghanistan, killing at least 10 people, including a police officer. At least 24 people were wounded in the attack, according to an Interior Ministry statement.

The bombings were the latest episodes in a recent escalation of violence in Afghanistan. They followed President Barack Obama's announcement Wednesday that he plans to withdraw 10,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year. NATO officials say Afghan armed forces will be ready to take over more security duties, and by 2014 the Afghan government will be prepared for full sovereignty.

The French government reported, meanwhile, that a French soldier was killed after coming under fire from insurgents while on a reconnaissance mission east of Kabul.

The death brings to 47 the number of NATO service members killed in June, and to more than 200 those killed this year, slightly fewer than last year's six-month total.

But as violence raged in the provinces, Kabul plunged deeper into a constitutional crisis as Afghanistan's legislature, upset over a controversial electoral investigation, passed a no-confidence resolution on Saturday against the nation's most senior judges, two days after doing the same for the attorney general.

Both votes were protests of the findings of a special investigative tribunal that invalidated the victories of 62 lawmakers because of alleged improper voting procedures and fraud.

The tribunal was requested by the attorney general, endorsed by the supreme court and approved by President Hamid Karzai.

Some parliament members characterize its findings as an unconstitutional power grab by Karzai and his appointees.

Two-term parliament member Fawza Kofi, not among those named in the tribunal's report, supported the no-confidence votes.

"The tribunal didn't deal with any criminal issues, rather it just invalidated the votes of the people," she said.

She acknowledged the parliamentary vote was largely symbolic, since the body has no power to remove the judges or attorney general. Abdul Malik Kamawi, chief executive of the supreme court, said the votes were unconstitutional and would be ignored.

Deputy Attorney General Rahmatullah Nazery also dismissed the no-confidence votes as illegitimate, since some of the lawmakers had been discredited by the special tribunal. Nazery said his office will refer the tribunal's findings to the Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan, which will have the final word on whether to replace the lawmakers.

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At least 20 dead in Afghan hospital bomb attack (AFP)

PULI ALAM, Afghanistan (AFP) – A bomb at an Afghan hospital on Saturday killed at least 20 people including women and children, days after President Barack Obama said 10,000 US forces would leave the country this year.

The suicide car bombing in Logar province, about 75 kilometres (45 miles) south of the capital Kabul, also wounded over 20 people and officials warned the death toll could rise.

An eyewitness described horrific scenes of victims on fire and body parts scattered in all directions after a sports utility vehicle (SUV) blew up in the remote district of Azra, close to the border with Pakistan.

The attack was condemned "in the strongest terms" by the United Nations, which said the hospital's maternity ward was badly damaged in the attack and many of the victims were women and children.

Underlining chaos and confusion at the site, the ministry of public health initially put the death toll at 60 but later corrected its own figures.

"At least 20 of our countrymen have been martyred and around 25 are wounded," the ministry said. The interior ministry also said 20 people were killed including hospital staff and patients, and 23 other civilians wounded.

But provincial health director Mohammad Zaref Nayebkhail told AFP the death toll could still be significantly higher as many people came to the scene quickly after the blast and removed the bodies of their relatives.

One man who lives near the devastated hospital, Abdul Rahman, told AFP that he lost seven relatives in the explosion.

"Seven members of my family including three women and two children went to that hospital this morning," he said, through tears.

"I was at home, then I heard a big explosion. When I rushed to the site, I saw many dead and injured people.

"Many of them were burning, on fire. There were body parts everywhere. My family is dead, I can't find them, they are under the rubble."

The Taliban denied it was behind the attack, with spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid saying: "We condemn this attack on a hospital... whoever has done this wants to defame the Taliban."

Staffan de Mistura, the special representative of the United Nations secretary-general for Afghanistan, called the blast "despicable".

"Much of the damage was in the maternity ward of the hospital, and many of those killed and injured were women and children," he said in a statement.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) also stressed that attacks on hospitals were prohibited under international humanitarian law.

The blast came at the end of a week when Obama announced that 33,000 US forces would leave Afghanistan by the end of next summer.

All foreign combat forces are due to pull out of the country by the end of 2014. There are currently up to 150,000 foreign forces in Afghanistan, including about 99,000 from the United States.

Some analysts fear that Afghan security forces may struggle to contain the Taliban-led insurgency, which has hit record levels of violence after nearly ten years, as withdrawals begin.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack as "savage and ignorant" in a statement released by his office.

Meanwhile, Karzai told a counter-terrorism summit in Tehran that militancy was on the rise in his country.

"Not only has Afghanistan not yet achieved peace and security but terrorism is expanding and threatening more than ever Afghanistan and the region," he said.

The two-day summit was attended by the heads of state of six regional countries, including Afghan neighbours Iran and Pakistan.

The blast in Logar is the second major attack in Afghanistan in two days.

On Friday, 10 people were killed by a bicycle bomb which exploded in a busy bazaar in the Khad Abad district of the northern province of Kunduz.

Militants in Afghanistan frequently target the Afghan police, army and other government employees as well as foreign forces in their near decade-long insurgency.

But civilians are the biggest casualties in the war, with 2,777 killed last year, according to the United Nations. That was the biggest total since the war started in 2001.

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At least 20 killed in suicide bombing in east Afghanistan (Reuters)

PULE ALAM, Afghanistan (Reuters) – A suicide car bomber killed at least 20 people, and possibly as many as 35, in an attack at a hospital in a remote district of eastern Afghanistan on Saturday that damaged its maternity ward, officials said.

Estimates of the casualties, which included patients and medical staff, varied widely in chaotic scenes outside the hospital in the remote Azra district of eastern Logar province, which is just south of Kabul.

Dozens more were wounded in one of the worst attacks this year.

Deen Mohammad Darwish, a spokesman for the Logar provincial government, said as many as 35 people were killed, although Afghanistan's Interior Ministry put the death toll at 20.

"The exact target is still not clear," Interior minister deputy spokesman Najib Nikzad said.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid denied responsibility and said the Islamist insurgents never attack hospitals.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack in which he said "tens of civilians" were killed. The United Nations said the maternity ward was hit in the bombing.

"This is a despicable attack against civilians who were seeking medical care, as well as visiting family members and health workers," Staffan de Mistura, the U.N. chief in Afghanistan, said in a statement.

Tensions have flared over civilian casualties, with insurgents and the Afghan government alike criticizing NATO-led forces for killing innocent Afghans while hunting for militants.

United Nations figures however show that insurgents are responsible for three-quarters of civilian deaths.

Military and civilian casualties hit record levels in 2010, the most violent year of the war since U.S.-backed Afghan forces toppled the Taliban in late 2001.

This year is following a similar trend, with violence growing across Afghanistan since the Taliban announced a spring offensive at the beginning of May.

U.S. commanders had already said they expected a rise in attacks as insurgents hit back after U.S. and NATO forces made gains during operations in the Taliban heartland in the south over the past 18 months.

The United Nations said two weeks ago that May had been the deadliest month for civilians since it began compiling statistics four years ago.

It said it had documented 368 "conflict-related" civilian deaths, 82 percent of them caused by insurgents.

The latest violence comes as seven areas across the country prepare to take over security responsibilities from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) fighting an increasingly unpopular war that has dragged on for 10 years.

That will coincide with the start in July of a gradual drawdown of U.S. troops. U.S. and NATO troops plan to hand over security responsibility for all of Afghanistan by the end of 2014, although critics warn the handover date is premature.

While most of the ISAF gains have been in Taliban strongholds in the south, the insurgency in eastern provinces like Logar and Kunar near the border with Pakistan is much more fragmented.

Taliban fighters often slip across the border from safe havens in Pakistan's largely lawless northwest but other groups like the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani network also operate extensively in the area.

(Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi; Writing by Alistair Scrutton; Editing by Sugita Katyal)

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