At least 11 dead and 65 injured in a car bomb attack in Kabul

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The car bomb has exploded near the Logistics and Engineering Center of the Ministry of Defense. The spokesman of the Kabul Police affirms that the objective of the attack is not yet clear.

 

At least eleven people have died and 65 have been injured, including nine children have been transferred to several hospitals in the capital. The attack has started with the detonation of a vehicle loaded with explosives in a high security area of Kabul and the subsequent shooting involving several strangers.

As reported by the local news agency Jaama, the Taliban have claimed responsibility for the attack that has injured more than 60 people near the headquarters of the Ministry of Defense in Kabul.

"The objective was a technical installation of the Ministry of Defense," Zabiulá Mujahid, spokesman for the fundamentalist movement founded by Mullah Mohamed Omar, said in a statement. The head of the Taliban has said that the attack was carried out with a car bomb that has exploded near the Logistics and Engineering Center of the Ministry of Defense, in Kabul.

Nasrat Rahimi, spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry, has posted on his official Twitter account that the explosion occurred around 08.55 local time (04.25 GMT), in the high security area of Pul-i-Mahmoud Khan, in the downtown Kabul.

The spokesman of the Police of Kabul, Firdaws Faramarz, has affirmed that the objective of the attack still is not clear. No insurgent group has yet claimed responsibility.

Thus, the Afghan Prime Minister, Abdullah Abdullah, has condemned the attack of the Taliban and has assured that it shows the "inherent criminal nature" of the fundamentalist group. "We will not be deterred by this savagery when it comes to persecuting and punishing the wrongdoers, and our heroic security forces have done a good job for severely punishing them during the last months," said Abdullah, in a message posted on his account. of the social network Twitter.

After the explosion, which has been heard several kilometers away, an intense column of smoke has risen. Among the facilities near the site is the headquarters of the local channel Shamshad TV, where several of its employees have been injured by the explosion, as one of the journalists has told.

 

Kabul has been hit with several attacks so far this year, the last one of relevance happened a month ago, when a limpet bomb placed on a bus in which Afghan officials were traveling caused five deaths and a dozen wounded.

Today's attack occurred while a Taliban delegation and representatives of the United States materialize in Qatar the seventh round of meetings to address the peace negotiations for Afghanistan.

Both sides seek a way out of almost two decades of armed conflict in the Asian nation, although until now the Taliban have refused to sit at the same table with the Afghan government.

According to the latest data released by the Special Inspector General for the Reconstruction of Afghanistan (SIGAR) of the United States Congress, the control of the Executive of Kabul has reached its lowest point since it began to account for the data in 2015, with just 54% of the territory in your hands.