A suicide car bomb blew up near the US embassy in the Afghan capital Kabul yesterday, killing at least four Afghans and wounding nearly 20 more, officials said.
The blast, about 100m from the heavily secured entrance to the embassy, damaged several vehicles while the area was packed with morning rush-hour traffic.
A large pool of blood smeared the road and a tree was set alight.
PHOTO: AP
The interior ministry said the target appeared to have been a passing convoy of foreign troops, but witnesses said there was no such convoy.
International military forces in the capital could not immediately comment.
“The information we have so far is that four people have been killed and three wounded. It was a suicide attack,” a city police chief, General Alishah Paktiawal, said at the scene.
The heavily barricaded US embassy, with the entire road running past it blocked to traffic, was closed yesterday for the Thanksgiving holiday.
“All embassy staff are accounted for,” US embassy spokesman Mark Stroh said.
An AFP reporter saw at least 10 wounded people removed from the scene in ambulances and police cars. The body of the suicide attacker lay on the ground near the destroyed remains of the car used to carry the bomb, he said.
There were three dead bodies and 18 wounded in the city’s hospital, health ministry spokesman Abdullah Fahim said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast with the radical Taliban and Haqqani networks said to be behind the growing number of attacks in the capital.
A man who has a cookie shop in the area said it appeared the suicide car bomber had had an accident and not hit his intended target.
“A Corolla vehicle came at high speed and had an accident with a white civilian Corolla here and then we heard a big explosion,” 20-year-old Arif Hussain said.
“There was no army, police or foreign forces in the area at the time. It seems the blast was triggered by the accident. He was driving very fast somewhere when he [had] the accident,” he said, adding that he saw the bodies of two men torn apart by the blast.
The Afghan capital has suffered a rash of attacks this year, fueling fears that a Taliban-led insurgency, which mostly attacks in the south and east of the country, is encroaching on the capital.
The Taliban movement claimed responsibility for an Oct. 30 attack in which a suicide bomber at the information and culture ministry building in the city center and killed five people.
A suicide attack outside the Indian embassy in July killed about 60 people.
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
Romania’s electoral commission on Saturday excluded a second far-right hopeful, Diana Sosoaca, from May’s presidential election, amid rising tension in the run-up to the May rerun of the poll. Earlier this month, Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau barred Calin Georgescu, an independent who was polling at about 40 percent ahead of the rerun election. Georgescu, a fierce EU and NATO critic, shot to prominence in November last year when he unexpectedly topped a first round of presidential voting. However, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the election after claims of Russian interference and a “massive” social media promotion in his favor. On Saturday, an electoral commission statement
Chinese authorities increased pressure on CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd over its plan to sell its Panama ports stake by sharing a second newspaper commentary attacking the deal. The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office on Saturday reposted a commentary originally published in Ta Kung Pao, saying the planned sale of the ports by the Hong Kong company had triggered deep concerns among Chinese people and questioned whether the deal was harming China and aiding evil. “Why were so many important ports transferred to ill-intentioned US forces so easily? What kind of political calculations are hidden in the so-called commercial behavior on the
‘DOWNSIZE’: The Trump administration has initiated sweeping cuts to US government-funded media outlets in a move critics said could undermine the US’ global influence US President Donald Trump’s administration on Saturday began making deep cuts to Voice of America (VOA) and other government-run, pro-democracy programming, with the organization’s director saying all VOA employees have been put on leave. On Friday night, shortly after the US Congress passed its latest funding bill, Trump directed his administration to reduce the functions of several agencies to the minimum required by law. That included the US Agency for Global Media, which houses Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Asia and Radio Marti, which beams Spanish-language news into Cuba. On Saturday morning, Kari Lake, a former Arizona gubernatorial and US
RSS