Afghan mourners held emotionally charged funeral ceremonies on Thursday for seven employees of leading national TV channel Tolo who were killed in a Taliban suicide bombing, which rights groups denounced as a “war crime”.
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A suicide bomber struck the minibus with workers from Tolo TV, owned by the private Moby Group, the country’s biggest media organization.
“Kabul, we lost seven staff members”, TOLO, a privately run news and entertainment station that is often critical of the Taliban, said on Twitter.
No group has so far claimed responsibility for the carnage, the latest in a wave of attacks despite an global push to jumpstart Taliban peace talks.
Afghanistan’s chief executive officer, Abdullah Abdullah, also released a statement condemning the attacks in which he said the journalists who were attacked had been working with “integrity and impartiality in hard conditions to inform the public of the true nature of the Taliban and the terrorists”, according to a translation.
The attack targeted staff from Afghan broadcaster Tolo TV and video production company Kaboora Productions.
Reporters Without Borders, in a release about the recent attack, said “Jihadists are among press freedom’s worst predators”.
Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said that four people were killed when a auto bomb was detonated in the west of Kabul on Wednesday, at around 5 p.m. local time.
Asking insurgency groups to immediately stop targeting civilians, Human Rights Watch (HRW) slammed the incident as an atrocity created to undermine Afghanistan’s still-fragile media freedom.
Secretary of State John Kerry being interviewed by TOLO TV in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2011.
Afghanistan sees the support of Pakistan as vital to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table.
Vice President Biden and President Ashraf Ghani condemned the Charsada terror attack and conveyed their grief over the loss of precious lives.
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The Taliban have not formally shown reaction to the process however, with their unofficial websites and online media opposing the process.
