KABUL: Daesh claimed responsibility for a suicide attack that killed morethan a dozen Afghans at an entrance to a government ministry in Kabul onMonday, less than a day before the beginning of a truce by Kabul with theTaliban insurgents.
Women were among the casualties, Kabul police spokesman Hashmat Stanekzaitold reporters. The Public Health Ministry said that 13 employees of theMinistry of Rural Development were killed and 25 wounded when the bomberlet 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 purchasegoods for Eid,” Ahmad Saleem, a ministry official, told Arab News. “Thisattack 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 ofJalalabad.
A group of civilians were wounded in that attack, which was foiled bysecurity forces, government officials said.
No group has claimed responsibility for the Jalalabad attack, but Daesh onits Amaq website said that it was behind the Kabul one, which occurred lessthan a day before the enforcement of a week-long truce, starting onTuesday, 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 thebeginning of the cease-fire tomorrow, officials said.The truce does notcover Daesh and other foreign militant networks.