Bank blast kills 34

New video of US, Aussie hostages

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan, June 22, (Agencies): At least 34 people were killed Thursday when a powerful car bomb struck a bank in Afghanistan’s Lashkar Gah city as people were queueing to withdraw salaries, the latest bloody attack during the holy month of Ramadan.

Sixty wounded people were rushed to hospital after the bombing at New Kabul Bank which upturned vehicles, left the area littered with charred debris, and sent a plume of smoke into the sky.

No group has claimed responsibility for the brazen attack, but it comes as the Taleban ramp up their nationwide spring offensive despite government calls for a ceasefire during Ramadan.

The bomb tore through a queue of civilians and government employees who had lined up outside the bank to collect their salaries ahead of the Eid holidays marking the end of Ramadan.

“At least 34 people were killed and 60 others wounded in today’s bombing,” Mullah Dad Tabidar, head of Bost government hospital, told AFP as bloodied victims were rushed in on makeshift stretchers.

Tabidar said civilians and policemen were among the fatalities, warning that the toll could rise further.

In a similar attack in February, at least six people were killed when a Taleban bomber rammed an explosives-laden car into Afghan soldiers who had queued outside a bank in Lashkar Gah to collect their salaries.

For years Helmand province, of which Lashkar Gah is the capital, was the centrepiece of the Western military intervention in Afghanistan, but it has recently slipped deeper into a quagmire of instability.

The Taleban effectively control or contest 10 of the 14 districts in Helmand, blighted by a huge opium harvest that helps fund the insurgency, and have repeatedly threatened to seize Lashkar Gah.

Meanwhile, an Afghan official says a militant attack the previous night inside a mosque in the country’s east has killed two members of the local council.

Salim Sallhe, spokesman for the provincial governor in Logar, says gunmen opened fire at worshippers during prayers at a mosque in Baraki district on Wednesday night. Two other local officials were wounded by the gunfire.

Sallhe says police are investigating. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack but Taleban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, denied the insurgents were behind the shooting.

In other violence in Logar, Nasir Ghayrat, chief of the provincial conical, says a man in Mohammad Agha district killed his wife on Thursday with an axe after accusing her of adultery.

KABUL:

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An American and an Australian have appeared in a second Taleban hostage video, nearly a year after they were kidnapped in Kabul.

Gunmen wearing police uniforms abducted American Kevin King and Australian Timothy Weekes, both professors at the American University of Afghanistan, in August last year, seizing them from their vehicle.

The 10-minute, 18-second video was posted on Telegram on Wednesday but dated June 16, according to SITE Intelligence Group, offering fresh proof that they were still alive.

The professors appear thinner than in their first hostage video that surfaced in January.

US Special Operations forces conducted a failed secret raid in August to rescue them. President Barack Obama authorised the raid in an unspecified area of Afghanistan but the hostages were not there, the Pentagon said.