A powerful car bomb struck near Kabul’s international airport on Monday evening, just hours after a suicide bomber blew himself up in the war-scarred Afghan capital.
A powerful car bomb struck near Kabul’s international airport on Monday evening, just hours after a suicide bomber blew himself up in the war-scarred Afghan capital.
At least 30 Afghan civilians, including nine children, were wounded in the attack on Camp Baron, a heavily protected residential compound for civilian technical contractors close to the city's main airport, a health ministry official said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the blast.
A police official said a truck packed with explosives drove up to the armoured gates of the complex before being detonated, smashing windows and sending glass flying and badly damaging nearby houses.
Medical aid group Emergency, which runs a hospital in Kabul, said it was receiving wounded at its surgical centre.
It said on Twitter: “#Afghanistan two attacks today in #Kabul, we’re currently receiving victims of the #masscasualty at our Surgical Centre”.
The violence comes as Afghan forces battle to end a protracted siege near the Indian consulate in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif which began on Sunday night.
Earlier Monday, a suicide bomber struck a street leading to the city’s international airport, near where the second blast took place, but no casualties were reported. The bombings mark the latest assaults on the war-scarred Afghan capital.
A Taliban suicide car-bomber struck a French restaurant popular with foreigners in Kabul on Friday, killing two people in a New Year’s Day attack. Fifteen others were wounded in the attack on Le Jardin, an Afghan-owned eatery, which caused a piercingly loud explosion and left a building engulfed in flames.
The spike in violence coincides with a renewed international push to revive peace talks with the resurgent Taliban.
Islamabad is set to host a first round of dialogue between Afghanistan, Pakistan, the US and China on January 11 to lay out a roadmap for peace.
