56 die in Afghanistan blasts

UAE officials among victims of deadly winter bombings campaign

FIVE UAE officials were among 56 people killed in a string of bombings across Afghan cities, authorities said yesterday, as Taliban militants step up a deadly winter campaign of violence.

The Emiratis were among 13 people killed when explosives hidden in a sofa detonated inside the governor’s compound in southern Kandahar on Tuesday.

The UAE’s ambassador to Afghanistan escaped the attack with injuries.

Just hours before, twin Taliban blasts in Kabul tore through a parliament annexe, which houses politicians’ offices, killing at least 36 people and wounding about 80.

And earlier on Tuesday, a Taliban suicide bomber killed seven people in Lashkar Gah, the capital of volatile Helmand province, as the militants ramp up nationwide attacks in frigid winter months, when fighting usually wanes.

The carnage underscores growing insecurity in Afghanistan, where US-backed forces are struggling to combat a resilient Taliban insurgency as well as al-Qaeda and Islamic State militants.

Kandahar governor Humayun Azizi and UAE envoy Juma Mohammed Abdullah Al Kaabi were injured by flames from the explosion, but many others were burnt beyond recognition, provincial police chief Abdul Raziq, who was present when the blast occurred, said.

“I was in the room, but had to leave to offer my evening prayer,” Raziq said. “I heard the boom from outside and when I came back I saw people were burning.”

Raziq blamed Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Talibanallied Haqqani network for the attack, saying they had long been plotting to eliminate Kandahar’s leadership.

“This terrorist attack happened at a time when the ambassador and a number of UAE diplomats in Afghanistan were on a trip to Kandahar to lay the foundation stone of an orphanage,” the Afghan foreign ministry said.

President Ashraf Ghani condemned the bombing and ordered an investigation led by Afghanistan’s National Security Council chief, Hanif Atmar.

The Taliban denied responsibility for the Kandahar attack, but said they were behind the Kabul blasts.

In the first explosion, a suicide bomber blew himself up next to a minibus transporting government employees. As rescuers reached the scene, a car bomb went off.

Among the 36 dead were four policemen who were killed in the second explosion when they rushed to help the victims of the first blast.

Afghanistan’s health ministry said the toll was expected to rise due to injuries.

Condemning the “barbaric attack”, Ghani lashed out at the Taliban for the Kabul assault on civilians, which left the area littered with bodies.

Tuesday’s carnage came just 10 days before Donald Trump is sworn in as US president.

The situation in Afghanistan will be an urgent matter for the new leader, although America’s longest war got scarcely a passing mention in the bitterly contested presidential election.

Repeated bids to launch peace negotiations with the Taliban have failed and a fierce new fighting season is expected to kick off in the spring.

Afghanistan last week welcomed the Pentagon’s decision to deploy some 300 US Marines to Helmand, where American forces engaged in heated combat until they pulled out in 2014.

The Marines will assist a Nato-led mission to train Afghan forces, in the latest sign that foreign forces are being drawn back into the worsening conflict.