Children internally displaced persons (IDP) stand outside their temporary mud house at a refugee camp in Afghan capital Kabul. AFP
Four people were killed and 20 wounded in a coordinated bomb and gun attack targeting the Afghan defence minister and several lawmakers in the country’s capital on August 3, not far from the heavily fortified Green Zone.
The wave of blasts, which Washington said bore the “hallmarks” of the Taliban, came as the Afghan army urged residents to evacuate a besieged southern city ahead of a planned offensive against the insurgents after three days of heavy fighting.
Violence has surged across the country since early May when the Taliban launched a nationwide offensive soon after the US-led foreign forces began their final withdrawal.
Security officials told AFP four people were killed and 20 others wounded in August 3’s attack, with medical charity Emergency saying four bodies of people killed in the assault had been brought to its facility in Kabul.
The interior ministry said the attack had been successfully repelled and all the attackers had been killed by security forces. “A big number of people were rescued and the area is secured now,” spokesman Mirwais Stanikzai told reporters.
The first bomb blew up in central Kabul late on August 3, sending a thick plume of smoke into the sky, AFP correspondents reported.
Defence minister Bismillah Mohammadi said it was a suicide car bomb attack targeting his house. “Unfortunately, some of my guards are wounded,” he added in a video message.
Less than two hours after the car bomb detonated, another loud blast followed by smaller explosions and rapid gunfire again shook Kabul, also near the high-security Green Zone that houses several embassies, including the US mission.
A security source said several attackers had stormed a lawmaker’s house after setting off the car bomb and were also shooting at the residence of the defence minister from there. “Several lawmakers were meeting at the house of this MP [member of parliament] to make a plan to counter the Taliban offensive in the north,” the source told AFP.
No group has yet claimed the attack.
Even as the blasts and gunfire rocked the city, crowds of people marched down Kabul’s streets and took to rooftops chanting “Allahu Akbar” and “Death to the Taliban” in support of Afghan forces battling the insurgents in three regional capitals.
The insurgents’ assaults on the cities of Lashkar Gah, Kandahar and Herat since last week came after they seized control of much of rural Afghanistan, as foreign forces began the last stage of their withdrawal from the country in May.
Fighting is raging for control of Lashkar Gah, the capital of southern Helmand province, with the UN saying at least 40 civilians were killed in the last 24 hours.
General Sami Sadat, commander of the 215 Maiwand Afghan Army Corps, urged residents of the city of 200,000 people to evacuate.
Officials said earlier that insurgents had seized more than a dozen local radio and TV stations in Lashkar Gah, leaving only one pro-Taliban channel broadcasting Islamic programming.
The UN Assistance Mission for Afghanistan (UNAMA) tweeted its “deepening concern for Afghan civilians … as fighting worsens” and called for an “immediate end to fighting in urban areas”.
