At least 15 killed by suicide bombers at Kabul funeral

KABUL — At least 15 Afghans were killed when three back-to-back explosions ripped through a funeral Saturday attended by government officials, authorities said.

About 700 mourners at a cemetery in the northern part of Kabul were in the middle of the funeral prayers for a prominent politician’s son when three suicide bombers detonated explosives, Abdullah Abdullah, the nation’s chief executive, who was at the service, said at a news conference.

The blasts left body parts scattered among the dead, witnesses said. Around 80 people were injured, including some high-ranking Afghan officials. A spokesman for the Interior Ministry said that the death toll was 15, but was expected to rise.

“People were stranding to pray when the three blasts happened,” said one of the mourners, Tahir Gardoon, a professor of political science at Khurshid University. “People were screaming, running, everywhere was fear.”

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani condemned the act, calling it “an outrageous attack on mourners burying the martyred. The country is under attack.”

Saturday’s violence capped a week that saw a devastating bomb blast in the heart of Kabul’s heavily militarized diplomatic zone that claimed nearly 100 lives, and antigovernment protests Friday that left with six dead. Sporadic gunfire also broke out Saturday near Emergency Hospital in central Kabul.

Continued unrest could paralyze and further weaken Ghani’s government, which is facing internal divisions and struggling to contain an aggressive Taliban insurgency and regional militants linked to the Islamic State, experts say.

The Taliban has denied responsibility for both Wednesday’s truck bomb blast and Saturday’s attack, but the government blames Wednesday’s blast on the Haqqani network, seen as the operational wing of the Taliban.

“There is no doubt that this shows once again the total weakness of the security forces,” said Hafiz Mansour, a member of the Afghan parliament.

Amrullah Saleh, the state minister for security forms, survived the funeral attack and in an interview with the television channel TOLONews TV, raised questions about the government’s ability to secure the besieged capital.

“If there were security measures, then three successive explosions would not have taken place,” he said.

The recent spate of violence comes as President Trump is reviewing the United States’ Afghan policy amid a push by some members of his administration to send more troops to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban and other militant groups. About 8,000 U.S. troops are currently deployed in Afghanistan.