Blast kills 19 at Afghan market
KABUL, Afghanistan — A suicide bombing Wednesday at a crowded market in northern Afghanistan killed 19 people and injured at least 28, officials said.
The blast in Faryab province’s Almar district was caused by explosives attached to a motorcycle, said Mohammad Saleh Saleh, the district’s governor. The dead included 10 members of the country’s security forces, he said.
Many people were out in public after Eid al-Fitr, the Islamic holiday that ended the fasting month of Ramadan.
No group immediately took responsibility for the attack, which was under investigation amid speculation that the security forces at the market had been targeted.
The bombing came days after Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, Afghanistan’s first vice president, visited the province to mark Eid al-Fitr and vowed that the government would stand by the increasingly volatile area. On July 15, an explosion in front of a bank in Maimana, the provincial capital, injured at least 20 people.
In Maimana on Friday, Dostum called on forces loyal to the Taliban and other opposition groups to join the peace process called for by President Ashraf Ghani. The government recently began talks with some elements of the Taliban.
Nicholas Haysom, the special representative in Afghanistan for United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, condemned Wednesday’s bombing, saying the targeting of civilians demonstrated “an appalling disregard for human life.”
Elsewhere in the country, two children were killed and two were hurt when a homemade bomb exploded in the eastern province of Logar.