Afghan attacks leave dozens of people dead

Army base falls; bombing hits Kabul

BAGHLAN-E-MARKAZI, Afghanistan — In a chaotic weekend of violence throughout Afghanistan, dozens of police officers, soldiers and civilians were killed by insurgents who, in four separate attacks, overran a military base, killed a police chief, destroyed a police post and bombed a memorial event.

In the capital, Kabul, a commemoration for a man some Afghans regard as a hero but others decry as a war criminal turned violent Sunday as suicide bombers attacked attendees, killing at least two people. Police arrested more than 100 attendees for shooting in the air.

But the deadliest single incident was the destruction by Taliban insurgents of an army base in the northern Baghlan province on Sunday, with at least 22 and as many as 40 security force members killed, local officials said.

The military installation was the second major base to fall to the insurgents in Baghlan province in the past month, and the third in northern Afghanistan during the same period.

Abdul Hai Nemati, the governor of Baghlan province, said the Afghan army base at Mangalha village, in the Baghlan-e-Markazi district just north of the provincial capital of Pul-i-Kumri, had been surrounded by insurgents.

A senior police official said the insurgents had captured the Mangalha base by

Sunday and had killed 40 soldiers and national and local police officers at that installation and at smaller outposts in the area.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information. Afghan officials have often responded with denials in response to initial reports of serious setbacks.

A spokesman at the Defense Ministry in Kabul, Ghafoor Ahmad Jawed, claimed that local officials’ description of the military facility as a base was inaccurate.

Jawed said it was a “check post” that included representatives of the Afghan army and other units. Jawed also denied that the Taliban had captured it, saying it had been abandoned by defenders. “We don’t know the number of [Afghan National Army] forces in the check post and the number of casualties yet,” Jawed said.

Mohammad Safdar Mohseni, head of the Baghlan provincial council, said that even before the main base fell, the death toll Saturday was 22: 16 army soldiers, four police special forces officers and two local police officers.

Mangalha village was once a Taliban stronghold. The insurgents surrounded the military base last year, but the government reclaimed control of the area.

The insurgents destroyed another Afghan military base and a nearby police post in Baghlan province on Aug. 15, killing 39 soldiers and policemen, according to local officials. That base was also in Baghlan-e-Markazi district, in neighboring Alawuddin village.

Officials said the loss of the two bases put the entire district at risk and endangered travel on the country’s main north-south highway between the capital and northern Afghanistan.

“After the first base collapsed, other military posts are collapsing one after another,” said the provincial council chairman, Mohseni. “The Taliban seized a huge amount of weapons, ammunition and vehicles from these collapsed posts. This is a big threat for the security of Baghlan province. The forces on the ground were not supported; they did not receive any reinforcement.”

The earlier defeat in Baghlan came a day after another northern base fell, at Chinese Camp, in Faryab province, where all 106 soldiers of an Afghan army company were either killed or captured by the insurgents. The defenders said they repeatedly called for reinforcements and resupply but that help never arrived.

Elsewhere, Taliban insurgents in central Afghanistan attacked the headquarters of Day Mirdad district in Maidan Wardak province on Sunday, killing 10 police officers, including a district chief, and setting off a gunbattle, according to Hakmat Durani, spokesman for the police chief of Maidan Wardak province. He added that dozens of insurgents were killed in retaliatory airstrikes by the air force and that reinforcements were being sent to the area.

In a separate attack late Saturday, militants targeted a checkpoint in the western Herat province, killing nine security force members and wounding six others, said Gelani Farhad, the provincial governor’s spokesman. He blamed the attack on the Taliban, saying about 10 insurgents were killed and five wounded during the ensuing gunbattle.

Deaths of Afghan security forces have steadily risen in recent years, as the international coalition has mostly withdrawn and left most of the fighting to the Afghans. In the first 10 months of 2016, the number of Afghan police and soldiers who died totaled 6,785, an average of more than 20 a day, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, a U.S. government agency.

Since then, the agency said, the U.S. military has classified casualty information as secret at the request of the Afghan government. Many local analysts say fatalities have likely increased.

CHAOS IN KABUL

In Kabul, hundreds of gunmen took to the streets Sunday, blocking traffic and firing their weapons into the air, defying a ban on such celebrations in honor of Ahmad Shah Massoud, a leader who was killed by al-Qaida in 2001. Health officials said 13 people were hospitalized, struck by falling bullets.

Young people brandishing knives and machetes joined the unruly mourning processions, and the city’s police made more than 100 arrests for public disorder offenses, seizing dozens of weapons and confiscating 30 cars used in the processions, according to Hashmat Stanikzai, a police spokesman.

The raucous and often violent processions have been an annual feature in Kabul for many years. Massoud is revered by his fellow Tajiks as the leader of the Northern Alliance fighting the Taliban, but he is regarded by other Afghan groups as a war criminal involved in the mass murder of opponents.

Massoud’s family and old comrades distanced themselves from the day’s events.

The scenes on Sunday shocked many people.

“I think everyone has had enough,” Saad Mohseni, director of the MOBY Group and a man known as Afghanistan’s media mogul, said in a tweet.

“They can commemorate at a stadium or somewhere out of the city. Kabul, a city of 5 million, cannot get hijacked because of a few hundred people,” Mohseni wrote.

At Massoud Square, near the U.S. Embassy, security officials shot and apparently killed a man they said was a would-be suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest. Later, another suicide bomber, this time on a motorcycle, attacked a Massoud procession, killing at least two people, according to Public Health Ministry spokesman Wahid Majroh. He said another 10 people were hospitalized, some in critical condition.

A police official who was not authorized to speak with the media said at least seven people were killed and more than 25 others were wounded in the suicide attack that targeted the procession in Kabul.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the reported attempt and the deadly blast, although the Islamic State has been behind many such attacks in recent years in Afghanistan.