KABUL, Afghanistan -- A suicide bomber blew himself up at a volleyball tournament in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, killing at least 50 people in the country's deadliest terrorist attack this year, officials said.
The bloodshed came just hours after the nation's parliament approved agreements allowing U.S. and NATO troops to remain in the country past the end of the year.
Dozens more were wounded, many critically, said Mokhlis Afghan, spokesman for the governor of Paktika province.
"There were too many people gathered in the one place to watch the game," Afghan said.
The lone suicide bomber, Afghan officials and commanders said, waded through the densely packed crowd, filled with young men and children watching the last match of a tournament in the Yahyakhel district of Paktika province. It was shortly after 5 p.m., and fans were eagerly anticipating the outcome in a sport popular nationwide.
"It was the final volleyball match, and it was about to end when suddenly a man showed up in the crowd and in a loud voice said, 'How are you guys? Allahu Akbar!'" said Gen. Sharif Yaftali, a senior Afghan army commander in the area. "Then he blew himself up."
Naseeb Ahmad, a doctor at Sharan Hospital in Paktika's capital, said the hospital received about 80 wounded people, 20 of them children. Officials said people of all ages were watching the adult-league interdistrict tournament.
The attacker is likely to have targeted the event to ensure maximum casualties. It is also possible that the presence of local police in the crowd made it an attractive target, as security forces are regularly attacked by insurgents.
Although most of the victims were civilians, a member of the provincial council in Paktika, Bahawul Khan Katawazai, said the dead included eight members of the Afghan Local Police, a village-based paramilitary outfit that supports the Afghan government.
No one claimed responsibility, and the Taliban's spokesman could not be reached by telephone.
Paktika, bordering Pakistan, is one of Afghanistan's most volatile regions, a place where Taliban and affiliated insurgent groups like the Haqqani network are waging an intensifying war against the government in Kabul.
Sunday's attack was characteristic of Haqqani operations, as the group regularly sends young men to carry out suicide attacks on high-profile targets.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani condemned the attack, according to an emailed statement from his press office. He called the attack a "non-Islamic, non-human act, which is not justifiable."
Volleyball is among the most popular forms of entertainment in rural Afghanistan. Where no net is available, a string is often used as a substitute. Villages and district teams often compete against one another in a local circuit, attracting sizable crowds of young men.
The Taliban had banned sports such as boxing and soccer when the group governed Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. In the years since, even as suicide attacks by various insurgent groups, including the Taliban, have become more frequent, the bombers have not typically targeted sporting events.
There have been exceptions. A few suicide attacks have targeted games of buzkashi, a competition in which men on horseback struggle over a dead goat. One of the deadliest suicide bombings in the country occurred at a dogfighting match near the southern city of Kandahar in 2008. At least 80 people were killed.
Attacks that kill women and children cause particular anger, and the Taliban have been known to avoid claiming responsibility or to blame deaths on security forces.
So far this year, there have been at least five suicide attacks in Paktika province, where many of the suicide bombers who carry out attacks in Afghanistan are trained.
In several of the attacks, the targets in the province appear to have been police officials or tribal leaders.
Earlier this year, a suicide bomber blew up a car packed with explosives near a busy market and a mosque in Paktika's Urgun district. The death toll was originally thought to have been close to 90, but was later revised down to 43. That attack was, until Sunday, Afghanistan's worst for 2014.
Attacks across the country have escalated this year amid a contentious election and Ghani's inauguration in September. The insurgents use their attacks to make clear their opposition to Ghani's administration, as well as his support for a security agreement with the U.S., which he signed immediately after taking office.
Afghanistan's parliament approved the agreement Sunday with the U.S. and another with NATO allowing 12,000 international troops to remain in the country past the end of this year.
President Barack Obama has approved an expanded combat mission authorizing American troops to engage Taliban fighters, not just al-Qaida terrorists. Obama's decision also means the U.S. can provide air support when needed.
The previous deal called for U.S. forces to remain only in a training and advisory capacity next year, though they would continue to conduct counterterrorism operations against al-Qaida. But with the attacks rising and casualties mounting among Afghan security forces, Ghani and the U.S. military came to the conclusion that a more active American engagement was needed next year if the Taliban is to be defeated.
The decision to expand the military's authority does not affect the overall number of U.S. troops who will remain in Afghanistan. Earlier this year, Obama ordered the American force be reduced to 9,800 by the end of this year, a figure expected to be cut in half by the end of 2015.
The troops were supposed to remain in a training and support capacity after ceding the leading role in the anti-insurgent war to Afghan security forces in the middle of last year. But the Afghans have suffered record casualties, stirring concerns that international troops are essential if the war is to be won.
Afghanistan's first deputy president, Abdul Rashid Dostum, welcomed Obama's decision, saying Sunday: "The United States knows that the Afghan army needs more equipment, that the army are being killed in Taliban attacks."
Obama wants all U.S. troops to be out of Afghanistan by the end of 2016, as his presidency draws to a close.
Information for this article was contributed by Rahim Faiez and Lynne O'Donnell of The Associated Press; by Sudarsan Raghavan and Mohammad Sharif of The Washington Post; by Joseph Goldstein and Farooq Jan Mangal of The New York Times; and by Eltaf Najafizada of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 11/24/2014