Deadly suicide bombing in Kabul, responsibility claimed
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KABUL: Daesh claimed responsibility for a suicide attack that killed more than a dozen Afghans at an entrance to a government ministry in Kabul on Monday, less than a day before the beginning of a truce by Kabul with the Taliban insurgents.
Women were among the casualties, Kabul police spokesman Hashmat Stanekzai told reporters. The Public Health Ministry said that 13 employees of the Ministry of Rural Development were killed and 25 wounded when the bomber let off explosives as officials left for home at the end of a fasting day. The toll could go higher, one official said.
“Some had just received their salaries and were heading home to purchase goods for Eid,” Ahmad Saleem, a ministry official, told Arab News. “This attack turned their happiness into mourning.”
The strike came hours after four assailants, one of them a suicide bomber, tried to storm the Department of Education in the eastern city of Jalalabad.
A group of civilians were wounded in that attack, which was foiled by security forces, government officials said.
No group has claimed responsibility for the Jalalabad attack, but Daesh on its Amaq website said that it was behind the Kabul one, which occurred less than a day before the enforcement of a week-long truce, starting on Tuesday, by the government with the Taliban insurgents.
President Ashraf Ghani traveled on Monday to the southern city of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban, where he is expected to declare the beginning of the cease-fire tomorrow, officials said.The truce does not cover Daesh and other foreign militant networks.
