Eight killed as Isil blows up armoured Nato convoy in Kabul

A POWERFUL blast targeting an armoured Nato convoy in Kabul killed at least eight people and wounded 28, including three coalition troops, yesterday in an attack claimed by Isil.

The explosion on a busy road near the US embassy and Nato headquarters, killed “mostly” civilians, an interior ministry spokesman told AFP.

Three coalition service members re- ceived “non-life threatening wounds” but are in stable condition, a spokesman for US Forces-Afghanistan said.

The attack, claimed by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, comes three weeks after the US dropped its largest non-nuclear bomb on the group’s hideouts in eastern Afghanistan.

The blast also comes days after the Taliban launched a “spring offensive”, heralding a surge in fighting as the US seeks to craft a new Afghan strategy and Nato considers boosting troop levels to break the “stalemate” against the resurgent militants.

The attack, which Isil said was a suicide car bomb and Nato said was an improvised explosive device, damaged two of the convoy’s heavily armoured vehicles and left a small crater in the road. At least three civilian cars were also damaged, with one ablaze, while windows were shattered up to several hundred metres away. Firefighters and ambulances rushed stunned survivors to hospital as President Ashraf Ghani slammed the blast as a “criminal act”.

Gen John Nicholson, Nato’s commander in Afghanistan, has said the US decision to drop the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast in Nangarhar province last month was a “very clear message” to Isil: “If they come to Afghanistan they will be destroyed”.

The weapon, dubbed the “Mother of All Bombs”, killed at least 95 jihadists, according to the Afghan defence ministry, but fighting in the area has continued.

Last week, two US troops were killed in an operation against Isil near where the bomb was dropped. The Pentagon has said it is investigating if they were killed by friendly fire.

Jim Mattis, the US defence secretary, warned of “another tough year” for both foreign troops and local forces when he visited Kabul last month, though he would not be drawn on calls by Gen Nicholson for a “few thousand” more troops to counter the Taliban.