Taleban bomber ‘targets’ court minibus in Kabul, killing eleven

New Taleban chief Akhundzada a scholar, not a soldier

KABUL, Afghanistan, May 25, (Agencies): A suicide bomber targeted a minibus carrying court employees in Kabul during morning rush hour Wednesday, killing 11 people, Afghan and UN official said. The Taleban claimed responsibility for the attack.

The bomber, who was on foot, detonated his explosives’ vest as he walked by the vehicle in the western part of the city, said Najib Danish, the Interior Ministry’s deputy spokesman.

The attack came as the Taleban named a new leader following the death of their former leader, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, in a US drone strike in Pakistan on Saturday.

The casualties in Wednesday’s bombing included both court workers and civilians and the explosion also wounded four people, Danish said. The minibus belonged to the judiciary department in neighboring Maidan Wardak province and was taking the workers there when it came under attack, he added.

Within an hour of the assault, the Taleban, who often target government employees in their war against the state, claimed responsibility for the bombing. The claim came from Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taleban spokesman,

Afghanistan security forces inspect at the site of an explosion in west of

Kabul, Afghanistan on May 25. (AP)

in an email sent to the media.

“This attack was carried out as revenge for the killing of six innocent prisoners in Kabul,” the statement said. It was a reference to the hanging early this month at a Kabul prison of six Taleban members convicted of terrorism.

President Ashraf Ghani’s office at the time said he had “approved executions of six terrorists who perpetrated grave crimes against civilians and security personnel.” The executions were the first approved by Ghani since he took office in 2014, promising to end the war. After the hanging, a Taleban statement accusing Kabul and the United States of torture, inhumane treatment and “killings under suspicious circumstances.”

The suicide attack in Kabul was the second of its kind on the judiciary this month — a judge was gunned down by unknown attackers in Kabul earlier in May.

The UN mission in Afghanistan condemned the attack.

Since Jan 1, UNAMA has verified 14 separate attacks targeting judges, prosecutors and judicial staff in Afghanistan, resulting in nine civilian deaths and 19 civilians wounded. Also, there have been four incidents of abduction of judicial staff. The Taleban claimed responsibility for seven of these incidents, said UNAMA.

“Attacks against judicial authorities are cowardly and contrary to international humanitarian law,” said Nicholas Haysom, the chief of UNAMA, adding that the mission urges “authorities to do everything in their power to ensure adequate protection of judicial officials.”

The last major attack in Kabul was on April 19, when a massive bomb killed 64 people and wounded hundreds. The Taleban also claimed that bombing.

In another development, Pakistan’s Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said that authorities will perform DNA tests on the body of a man who was killed in an American drone strike to determine whether the slain man is actually Taleban chief Mullah Mohammed Akhtar Mansour.

Meanwhile, religious scholar Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, named Wednesday as the Afghan Taleban’s new leader, was a senior judge during the insurgent group’s five-year rule over Afghanistan and issued many of its harsh verdicts.

Believed to be aged in his fifties, he hails from Afghanistan’s southern province of Kandahar like both his former boss — Mullah Akhtar Mansour, who was killed in a US drone strike on Saturday — and Taleban founder Mullah Omar, who died in 2013.

Akhundzada went on to become the group’s “chief justice” after a US-led invasion toppled the Taleban government in 2001. He was a close ally of Mansour and was one of his two deputies.

Akhundzada is not known for his prowess on the battlefield, having preferred a life of religious and legal study. He is said to have issued many of the group’s rulings on how Muslims should comply with the Taleban’s extreme interpretation of Islam.