TALIBAN SUICIDE BOMBER KILLS AT LEAST 10 CIVILIANS, TWO NATO TROOPS IN KABUL
KABUL (Reuters) - A
Taliban suicide blast in the center of Kabul killed at least 10 civilians and
two NATO soldiers on Thursday, destroying cars and shops in an area near the
headquarters of Afghanistan’s international military force and the U.S. embassy.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack even as the insurgents and U.S.
officials have been negotiating a deal on a U.S. troop withdrawal in exchange
for Taliban security guarantees.
“At least 10 civilians
have been killed and 42 injured were taken to hospitals,” said Nasrat Rahimi, a
spokesman for the interior ministry. The NATO-led Resolute Support mission said
in a statement a Romanian and a U.S. member of the force were killed in action
in Kabul. It did not provide any more details. A senior Afghan interior
ministry official said the two soldiers were killed in the suicide bomb attack
and their vehicle was the main target.
The death of the U.S.
service member brings the number of American troops killed in Afghanistan this
year to 16, including three last month. Several cars and small shops were torn
apart by the blast at a checkpoint on a road near the NATO office and U.S.
embassy. Police cordoned off the area. Witnesses said the suicide bomber blew
himself up as many people were standing nearby or crossing the road.
Besmellah Ahmadi said
he suffered minor wounds and sought shelter in a shop.“My car windows were
shattered. People rushed to get me out,” he told Reuters. There has been no
let-up in violence in Afghanistan even though both the Taliban and U.S.
officials have reported progress in negotiations aimed at securing a deal on
U.S. withdrawal. President Ashraf Ghani accepted the resignation of the head of
Afghanistan’s powerful security agency NDS on Thursday over a separate incident
overnight in the eastern city of Jalalabad. The NDS had said it killed four men
suspected of ties to Islamic State, but some local officials said four brothers
with no ties to militants had been killed.
Rahimi, the interior
ministry spokesman, said government forces killed a senior Taliban commander,
more than 20 fighters and the man the hardline insurgent group planned to
impose as regional governor, in another clash on Thursday in central Maidan Wardak
province. And in the eastern province of Loghar, Taliban fighters said they
detonated a car bomb near a security meeting. Government officials said four
civilians were killed. On Monday, a Taliban suicide truck bomber attacked a
compound used by international organizations in Kabul, killing at least 16
people and wounding more than 100. A Romanian was among those killed and one
was seriously wounded in the attack on the compound, known as the Green
Village.
TALIBAN GAINS
GROUND
The Taliban now controls
more territory than it has since 2001, when the United States launched a
military operation against the group for harboring the al Qaeda militants
responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The U.S. negotiator for peace in Afghanistan,
Zalmay Khalilzad, said this week the two sides had drawn up a draft framework
agreement under which U.S. troops would leave five military bases within 135
days of the signing of the pact.
The U.S. general
overseeing American forces in the region, General Kenneth McKenzie, declined to
comment on the negotiations with the Taliban. But he saw a continuing need for
military pressure on al Qaeda and Islamic State militants in the region going
forward, regardless of the outcome of the talks. “We can explore what that’s
going to look like. It could be a broad variety of things. But I don’t think
you can leave it uncontested,” McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, told
reporters during a trip to Jordan.
There are some 14,000
U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Despite ending their combat role in 2014, an
estimated 20,000 U.S. and NATO troops remain in the country to train, advise
and assist Afghan forces. Khalilzad is expected to meet Afghan and NATO
officials to explain the draft agreement, which must still be approved by
President Donald Trump before it can be signed. Khalilzad, a veteran
Afghan-born U.S. diplomat, has shared details of the draft with President
Ghani, and sought his opinion before firming up an agreement that could bring
an end to America’s longest war.
But Ghani’s government
is seeking clarification from the United States on the draft agreement. “The
world must break its silence,” Ghani’s spokesman, Sediq Sediqqi, said on
Twitter, referring to what some people in Afghanistan see as a recent U.S.
reluctance to criticize the Taliban, through fear of derailing the talks. The
U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, John Bass, condemned the attack: “It is far
past time for these senseless attacks to end,” he said on Twitter. He did not
refer to the Taliban.
Ghani condemned what
he called a cowardly attack on civilians by the Taliban. “They have shamelessly
claimed responsibility and are celebrating the deaths of innocent lives,” he
said on Twitter. Ghani said he had accepted the resignation of the NDS chief,
Mohammed Masoom Stanekzai, in response to the Jalalabad killings. Provincial
officials and residents said the NDS forces had killed four brothers, one of
whom was a working as a secretary for a Senate official. “As a responsible
state we have zero tolerance for civilian casualties,” Ghani said in a tweet,
adding that he had ordered an independent probe into the killings. The United
Nations in a report released in July said that at least 3,812 Afghan civilians
were killed or wounded in the first half of 2019.
Source: Reuters – 5 September 2019
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