Though the attack targeted security forces, officials say that the majority of the casualties were civilians. Despite that claim, Taliban forces continue to do exactly that in both Helmand and Kunduz. The two terrorists utilized a common terrorist bombings strategy: first, one of the terrorists drove a truck laden with hundreds of pounds of explosives and detonated it. Following the first attack, the second terrorist opened fire on survivors before eventually being killed.
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The auto bomb and gun attack occurred near key ministries and government offices, and marks the beginning of the militant group’s annual “spring offensive”.
The Taliban said on their Pashto-language website that they had carried out the suicide bombing on “Department 10”, an NDS unit, which is responsible for protecting government ministers and VIPs. Obaidullah Tarakhail, who was nearby and couldn’t see or hear anything for 20 minutes afterward. “All around was dark and covered with thick smoke and dust”, he said.
A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahid, issued a statement claiming responsibility for the attack.
Just a week earlier, the Taliban vowed to escalate attacks as the Afghan weather warms.
Previously, the White House has also condemned the terrorist attack in Kabul.
Most of the wounded suffered only minor injuries and were sent home after treatment, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. He visited the scene on Tuesday, saying “the government raised the call for peace, but unfortunately the answer by the enemy was fighting, violence, bloodshed, killing innocent people”.
The Taliban’s spring offensive, “Operation Omari”, is only a week old and already the civilian toll is high.
Ismail Kawasi, spokesman for the Public Health Ministry, said so far 198 wounded people have been brought to area hospitals.
The attack was widely condemned by the Afghan officials as well as the global community. He said he could hear gunfire following the explosion.
For years Afghans fled to the capital, and other cities, to escape the daily brutality of a war fought mostly in their rural home districts.
But correspondents say that in fact the Taliban has gained in strength since the bulk of British, American and other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation forces left in 2014.
What is the spring offensive?
In The Hague, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said there was “absolutely no justification for attacks on civilian and security people” in Afghanistan.
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The US Embassy said the attack underscored the harm the Taliban continued to inflict on the Afghan people.
