19 die as bomber targets Afghan supreme court
Staff were leaving work when terrorist launched the attack
KABUL // Nineteen people were killed and more feared dead when a suicide bomber attacked Afghanistan’s supreme court yesterday, as staff were leaving work.
It was the second attack on government institutions in less than a month.
The bomber, who was on foot, detonated the device in the car park as employees were boarding a bus to go home, said interior ministry spokesman Najibullah Danish. Health ministry spokesman Waheed Majroh said women and children were among the 41 wounded.
Police barricaded the road around the compound as panicked relatives of court employees began to gather and ambulances and firefighting vehicles arrived. The compound is on the road leading from Kabul international airport to the US embassy.
Last month, twin suicide blasts claimed by Taliban insurgents struck employees exiting a parliament annexe in Kabul, killing 30 people and wounding 80. The carnage underscores growing insecurity in Afghanistan, where local forces are struggling to combat a resilient Taliban insurgency, as well as Al Qaeda and ISIL militants more than two years after Nato’s combat mission ended.
On Monday, the United Nations said civilian casualties in Afghanistan last year were the highest recorded by the world body, with nearly 11,500 non-combatants – one third of them children – killed or wounded. This month, an official US watchdog said the fatalities among Afghan troops and police soared last year as the government’s overall control of the country declined.
The grim statistics paint a picture of a beleaguered nation still in the grip of a security crisis, despite many years and billions of dollars spent building Afghanistan’s army and police.
No group has yet claimed re- sponsibility for yesterday’s attack, but the Taliban have targeted the court before.
They killed 15 civilians with a suicide car bomb at the entrance to the compound in 2013.
The insurgent group threatened further attacks on the judiciary if it continued to sentence its militants to death.
The carnage underscores growing insecurity in Afghanistan