At least 48 killed in Kabul suicide blast
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast, which came after several weeks of relative calm in Kabul
KABUL: The death toll from a suicide blast at an educational centre in the Afghan capital on Wednesday reached 48, with another 67 wounded, the health ministry said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast, which came after several weeks of relative calm in Kabul but previous attacks on minority community targets in the area have been claimed by IS.
The Taliban issued a statement denying it was involved. The attack, which came as the central city of Ghazni struggles to recover from five days of intense fighting, underlined how hard the insurgents have been pressuring badly stretched local security forces.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan called for the fighting to stop, saying up to 150 civilians are estimated to have been killed in Ghazni, where the public hospital was overwhelmed and water and electricity supplies cut.
“The extreme human suffering caused by the fighting in Ghazni highlights the urgent need for the war in Afghanistan to end,” the top UN official in Afghanistan, Tadamichi Yamamoto, said in a statement.
The Taliban, who launched their Ghazni assault last Friday and battled Afghan forces backed by US air strikes in the middle of the city for days, said their fighters were pulled out to prevent further harm to the city’s population.
“They were facing severe shortages of food and drinking water as the power supply was also suspended two days ago,” a Taliban commander, who declined to be identified, said by telephone.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said it was providing dressing packages and oral and intravenous medicine to treat the wounded, along with electricity generators and fresh water for about 18,000 people. The Ghazni attack, one of the Taliban’s most devastating in years, has clouded hopes for peace talks that had been prompted by an unprecedented ceasefire during the Eid celebration in June and a meeting last month between Taliban officials and a senior US diplomat.