Kabul: At least six persons were killed and nine injured on Tuesday in a suicide attack near a bank in Kabul, Afghan police said.
The attack took place at around 10 a.m. near a New Kabul Bank branch in a heavily protected area about 300 metres from NATO’s Resolute Support Mission Headquarters, the US Embassy and the Kabul Supreme Court.
Kabul police spokesperson, Basir Mujahid told Efe news the victims included five civilians and the attacker.
The wounded, including four women, were taken in several ambulances to the Wazir Akbar Khan hospital, Afghan Ministry of Public Health spokesperson Ismail Kawsi told Efe.
The Taliban has claimed the attack that was likely targeted at soldiers and police officers who were at the bank to withdraw their salaries ahead of the Eid al-Adha holiday this week.
The front side of the Kabul Bank was completely shattered and there was much damage to the fronts of several adjacent businesses.
The blast occurred on a street lined with shops and banks at a time when many officials were collecting their salaries before the Muslim Eid holiday at the end of the week.
In another development, at least 13 civilians, including women and children, were killed in an overnight airstrike by Afghan security forces that targeted the Taliban in western Herat province, according to Gelani Farhad, spokesman for the provincial governor.
Farhad told The Associated Press news agency that the Monday night strike in Shindand district also wounded seven civilians. A Taliban base and a prison run by the insurgents were targeted, he said.
The prison was destroyed and 19 prisoners – both military and civilians escaped. The civilians who were killed died in their homes just next to the Taliban base, he added.
According to the spokesman, the airstrikes also killed 16 Taliban fighters.
The Taliban have not commented on the Herat attack and Farhad’s information could not be independently verified.
Tuesday’s blast was the latest in a long series of suicide attacks in Kabul, where 209 civilians were killed and 777 injured in the first half of the year alone, according to figures by the UN.
It came three months after a massive truck bomb ripped through the same area, killing at least 150 people.
President Ashraf Ghani’s government has started tightening security around the centre of the city, where many of the most deadly attacks have taken place.
Earlier this month, the Taliban pledged to turn Afghanistan into a “graveyard” for foreign forces after US President Donald Trump committed American troops indefinitely to the war there.
