Taliban claims bomb attack, pushes for prisoner release

THE TALIBAN claimed a deadly attack on an Afghan intelligence agency post yesterday as they urged the new power-sharing government to accelerate a prisoner swap to pave the way for talks.

The Taliban said the attack in Ghazni was a response to the government’s recent declaration of war. Last week, President Ashraf Ghani ordered security forces to switch to an “offensive” position against the militants after two deadly attacks killed dozens of people.

Last Tuesday, militants stormed a maternity hospital in Kabul, killing 24 people, including mothers, nurses and two babies. No one claimed responsibility for the attack on the clinic in Dashti Barchi, a mostly Shiite neighborhood in Kabul. Also, a suicide bomber targeted the funeral of a pro-government militia commander and former warlord in the eastern province of Nangarhar, killing 32 people and wounding 133 others. That attack was claimed by Daesh.

The attack came a day after Ghani and his political rival, Abdullah Abdullah, signed a powersharing agreement, two months after both declared themselves the winner of last September’s presidential election. Ghani and Abdullah, who held parallel inauguration ceremonies in March, had been locked in a power struggle since the vote. The discord prompted the Donald Trump administration to announce it would cut $1 billion in assistance to Afghanistan if the two Afghan leaders did not work out their differences. A peace agreement between the U.S. and the Taliban, signed on Feb. 29, calls for American and NATO troops to leave Afghanistan. It was seen at the time as Afghanistan’s best chance at peace following decades of war.