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.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS