Suicide bomber attacks wedding party in Kabul

KABUL, Afghanistan — A suicide-bomb blast ripped through a wedding party on a busy Saturday night in Afghanistan’s capital and dozens of people were killed or wounded, a government official said. More than 1,000 people had been invited, one witness said, as fears grew that it could be the deadliest attackin Kabul this year.

Interior Ministry spokesmanNusrat Rahimi told The Associated Press the attacker set off explosives among the wedding participants. Both the Taliban and a local affiliate of the Islamic State group carry out bloody attacks in the capital.

The blast occurred near the stage where musicians wereand “all the youths, children and all the people who were there were killed,” witnessGul Mohammad said.

Officials were not expected to release a toll until daytime Sunday.

“There are so many dead and wounded,” said Ahmad Omid, a survivor who said about 1,200 guests had been invited to the wedding for his father’s cousin. “I was with the groom in the other room when we heard the blast, and then I couldn’t find anyone. Everyone was lying all around the hall.”

Outside a local hospital, families wailed. Others were covered in blood.

The blast at the Dubai Citywedding hall in western Kabul, a part of the city that many in the minority Shiite Hazara community call home, shattered a period of relative calm. On Aug. 7, a Taliban car bomb aimed at Afghan security forces detonated on the same road, killing 14 people and wounding 145 — most of them women, childrenand other civilians.

Kabul’s huge, brightly lit wedding halls are centers of community life in a city weary of decades of war, with thousands of dollars spent on a single evening.

“Devastatedby the news of a suicide attack inside a wedding hall in Kabul. A heinous crime against our people; how is it possible to train a humanand ask him to go and blow himself [up] inside a wedding?!!” Sediq Seddiqi, spokesman for President AshrafGhani, said in a tweet.

The wedding halls also serve as meeting places. In November, at least 55 people were killed when a suicide bomber sneaked into a Kabul wedding hall where hundreds of Muslim religious scholars and clerics had gathered to mark the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad. The Taliban denied involvement in an attack that bore the hallmarks of the Islamic State affiliate.

The explosion came a few days after the end of the Muslim holiday of Eid alAdha, with residents visiting family and friends, and just before Afghanistan marks its 100th independence day Monday under heavier security in a city long familiar with checkpoints and razor wire.