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Afghanistan: dozens dead in Kabul bombing close to homes of politicians Afghanistan: dozens dead in Kabul bombing close to homes of politicians
(35 minutes later)
A suicide car bomb killed has killed at least 24 people as well as the bomber and injured another 40 people early on Monday morning in a western neighbourhood of Afghanistan’s capital Kabul where several prominent politicians reside. The Taliban have killed at least 24 people and wounded dozens more in a suicide bomb attack against a bus carrying government employees in the Afghan capital, Kabul.
The bomber appeared to have rammed into a minibus, but interior ministry spokesman Najib Danish said was not clear whether the bus and its occupants were the target. Investigators were still at the scene.  The attack happened in the western part of the city during rush hour, and mainly killed employees of the Afghan ministry of mines and petroleum, according to Kabul police.
Buses carrying government workers have been targeted previously, but Danish said the bus was badly burned and it wasn’t immediately known whether the occupants were government employees. However, the Taliban, in a statement taking responsibility for the attack, claimed to have targeted a bus carrying personnel working for the government intelligence agency.
“Right now all we know is that they were all civilians,” he told The Associated Press. The attack comes after a large popular demonstration, planned for Monday, was cancelled one day prior due to security threats.
A spokesman for the interior ministry said the death toll was 24.  A previous protest, exactly one year ago, organised by the so-called Enlightenment Movement, a coalition of civil society activists fighting for better rights for the Hazara minority, was attacked by suicide bombers who killed at least 80 people.
No one immediately took responsibility for the explosion but both the Taliban and the Islamic State group’s affiliate in Afghanistan have staged past attacks in Kabul. Isis claimed responsibility for last year’s attack.
Several prominent political leaders, such as Hazara leader Mohammad Mohaqiq, live in western Kabul. Several attacks have occurred in the neighbourhood, including the suicide attack last month that killed prominent Shiite Muslim cleric Ramazan Hussainzada, who was also a senior leader of the ethnic Hazara community. Monday’s protest was cancelled after organisers met on Sunday with president Ashraf Ghani, his national security adviser and the deputy interior minister, General Ali Murad, himself a Hazara.
Eyewitnesses to Monday’s attack said shattered glass from nearby buildings was scattered over the roadway. It was unclear whether the attacker had initially intended to target the protesters, but a Western official said reports suggested that he had been, and was re-directed to “a target of opportunity” when the demonstration was cancelled.
“The sound was very strong. The ground shook,” said Mohammed Nader, who owns a convenience store in the neighbourhood. The bomb went off close to the home of Mohammad Mohaqeq, a prominent Hazara politician and deputy to the government’s chief executive.
The suicide attacker hit a minibus, said Nader. Basir Mujahed, spokesman of Kabul police, said most of the victims were staff of the ministry of mines and petroleum.
Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report The Afghan Taliban have been ramping up its warm weather offensive across the country. Last week, the militants attacked eight district centres around the country in just two days. Over the weekend, they captured Kohistan in Faryab province and Taywara in Ghor province.
In Ghor, the militants stormed a district hospital, killing up to six injured policemen and damaging part of the hospital, according to local security officials.
Also last week, in the northeastern Badakhshan province, the Taliban killed at least 32 members of the local police and government-aligned uprising groups in a push to capture Tagab district.
The perhaps most spectacular attack came on Thursday, when the Taliban rammed three Humvee vehicles stolen from the Afghan army and laden with explosives into government security outposts in Helmand’s Gereshk district.
Following the attack, the militants claimed that one of the suicide bombers was the son of the group’s supreme leader, Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhunzada.
Sources within the Taliban confirmed that the leader’s 23-year-old son, Abdur Rahman, known under his nom de guerre, Hafiz Khalid, had died in the attack.
That claim was not independently verified, and could be a propaganda attempt to rally the movement behind the leader, who inherited deep internal rifts when he took over leadership last year following the killing of his predecessor, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, by a US drone.
1,662 civilians were killed in the Afghan conflict in the first half of 2017, a record-high according to the UN. The Afghan capital accounts for about 20% of all killed and injured civilians, surpassing even Helmand. While that number does not account for difficulties in reporting from some rural provinces, it is also a clear sign of increased violence in the capital.
The Afghan government believes Pakistan to be a key supporter of the Afghan insurgency.
On Saturday, the Pentagon announced that the US would withhold $50m in military reimbursements to Pakistan for failing to curb the Haqqani network, a hardline military wing of the Taliban.
Last year, the Obama administration withheld $300m.