Afghans have begun three days of national mourning for the 41 victims of yesterday's suicide bomb attack.
The Taliban, which has carried out more than 130 suicide attacks in Afghanistan this year, has denied that it was behind the attack.
A mass funeral was held in the rural town of Pul-i-Khumri, about 150km north of Kabul, where the attacker targeted a crowd gathered yesterday to welcome a visiting parliamentary delegation.
Meanwhile the bodies of six MPs, including prominent opposition figure Mustafa Kazimi, have been flown back to the capital aboard military aircraft. They will be given a state funeral.
Most of the country's television stations abandoned normal programming to broadcast recitations from the Koran, religious music and analysis of the incident.
The north of the country has been relatively free of the near-daily Taliban-linked violence plaguing southern and eastern areas but the insurgents have warned they would take their campaign nationwide.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon denounced the bombing and voiced anxiety about the unstable security situation in the country.
