18 killed in bomb attack on funeral in Afghanistan
At least 18 mourners were killed in a bombing at a funeral in Afghanistan’s volatile east yesterday, capping a deadly year for ordinary Afghans.
Another 13 people were injured in the blast near Jalalabad, the provincial capital of Nangarhar province.
Authorities initially said the bombing was carried out by a suicide attacker but now believe the explosives were hidden in a motorcycle.
“The explosion was caused by a motorcycle bomb our investigation has concluded,” said Attaullah Khogyani, spokesman for Nangarhar’s governor.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast.
The Taliban said on Twitter that they had nothing to do with the attack.
The bombing targeted the funeral of a former governor of Haska Mina district who died recently of natural causes, the governor’s office said.
The wreckage of a motorcycle lay in the dirt at the cemetery. Clothes, shoes and hats were scattered on the ground.
Bodies lay around and a plume of black smoke rose into the sky as terrified mourners, most of them elderly men, ran from the scene.
While the Taliban is responsible for most attacks and casualties in Afghanistan, ISIL militants have been on a rampage this month.
The attack in Nangarhar, a province bordering Pakistan and a stronghold for ISIL, came days after the group claimed an assault on a Shiite cultural centre in Kabul that left 41 people dead and more than 80 wounded.
That followed a Christmas Day attack, also claimed by ISIL, near an Afghan intelligence agency compound in the Afghan capital in which six civilians were killed.
On December 18, militants from the extremist group stormed an intelligence training compound in Kabul, triggering an intense gunfight with police, two of whom were wounded.
The extremist group has gained ground in Afghanistan since it appeared in the region in 2015, and has scaled up its attacks in Kabul and elsewhere, including assaults on security installations and the country’s Shiite minority.
The latest attacks come at the end of a particularly bad year for Afghans, with the number of civilian casualties expected to be one of the highest on record since the US invasion in 2001.
More than 8,000 civilians were killed or wounded in conflict-related violence in the first nine months of this year, according to statistics compiled by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.
Last year’s civilian casualty toll of 11,418 was the highest for a single year since the UN began documenting civilian deaths and injuries in 2009.