Afghanistan’s national police stand at the entrance gate of Police Academy the aftermath of last night suicide attack on the police academy, west of Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, August 8, 2015.
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AFP adds from Kabul: Fifteen more fatalities were confirmed on Saturday from a barrage of bombings in Kabul, taking the toll to 51 in the deadliest day for the city in years as Afghanistan battles an escalating Taliban insurgency.
The attacks, on Friday, have dimmed hopes that the Taliban might have been weakened by a power struggle following their long-time leader’s death. It said 10 security guards were injured and three insurgents were killed by Afghan security forces as they tried to enter the base.
And shortly after that, a vehicle bomb exploded outside the fortified headquarters of the U.S. military’s elite Special Operations forces, allowing insurgents to breach the outer perimeter of the compound.
The violence has picked up particularly since the disclosure two weeks ago of the death of Mullah Omar, the longstanding leader of the Islamist insurgents.
Agha said the “appointment of every leader which has taken place outside the country has brought very bad repercussions for the oppressed Afghan nation”.
Officials say that an American soldier has been killed and several others have been wounded in a series of attacks Friday in Afghanistan’s capital. Fifteen people were killed and around 300 wounded in one of the most powerful explosions to have ever shaken the Afghan capital.
The Taliban said it was not behind the explosion, though the group does not usually claim responsibility for attacks that kill or maim large numbers of civilians, especially women and children.
The attack killed McKenna and eight Afghan contractors, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation spokesman Col. Brian Tribus said.
Another police officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters, said there were also at least 25 wounded among the recruits.
But I was amazed to see an announcement from Akora Khatak’ infamous Darul-uloom-Haqqania that its head, Maulana Sami-ul-Haq, has sworn his allegiance to the newly appointed chief of Afghan Taliban, Mullah Akhtar Mansoor.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the earlier attack either.
“We want this senseless bloodshed to end”, said Jamel Shah Stanikzai, a man in his 20s who attended the vigil.
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If Islamabad is not about to install a Taliban regime as freshly returned rulers in Kabul, the primary reason is that this could conceivably cause the non-Taliban sections in Afghanistan to lean in the direction of a civil war.
