Two massive attacks in Kabul on Friday, one near a government and military complex in a residential area and the other a suicide bombing outside a police academy, killed at least 35 people, sending the strongest message yet to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani that militants are still able to strike at his heavily fortified seat of power.
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The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which came shortly after a barrage of bombings in Kabul had killed at least 51 people on Friday – the deadliest day for the capital in years.
The suicide bomber dressed as a police officer and detonated himself among students at the academy in Afghanistan’s capital, which is situated near a U.S. Special Forces base called Camp Integrity. Triebus also said a coalition service member was killed, but he did not give the nationality of that person.
These attacks are the most serious in months, and the first in Kabul since the Taliban named a new leader.
The attacks could also be a move by the new Taliban leadership to prove their power, observed Graeme Smith, a researcher with the global Crisis Group in Kabul.
Buildings close to Camp Integrity – the US special forces’ base – were flattened by the explosion and damaged during a gunfight lasting several hours.
The attack followed two earlier bomb blasts that killed dozens of Afghans and injured hundreds more.
That blast was one of the largest ever in Kabul, flattening a city block and leaving a 30ft crater.
The insurgents have not officially confirmed the death of the supreme leader of the Taliban, who has not been seen publicly since the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan that toppled the Taliban government in Kabul. It stated 4 attackers have been concerned, with one blowing up a automotive on the entrance to allow the opposite three to enter the bottom.
Last Monday, the Taliban released a video in which they showed members of the group pledging allegiance to the new leader, Mullah Akhtar Mansour.
The Taliban has claimed responsibility for at least two of the bombings.
“The death toll from the attack… has risen to 15”, deputy presidential spokesman Sayed Zafar Hashemi told AFP, adding that “240 people have been wounded – including women and children”.
The United Nations’ mission in Afghanistan said that Friday was the worst single day for civilian casualties since it began systematically documenting the number of civilians killed or injured in the war in 2009.
“The fact is, in recent years the Afghan people have endured much, but they are resilient and are resilient even in the face of a brutal insurgency”, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said in a briefing in Washington on Friday.
The battle between the Western-backed authorities and the Taliban has intensified because the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation fight mission ended final yr, however Afghan safety forces and civilians have borne the brunt of the violence.
Abdul Hassib Seddiqi, the spokesman for Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security, said Wednesday that Mullah Omar died in a hospital in the Pakistani city of Karachi in April 2013.
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His death has thrown the already-fragile peace talks between the Sunni Islamists and the Afghan government into flux; a second round of talks was slated to take place in Islamabad on July 31 but was postponed after the Taliban confirmed Omar’s death.
