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Attack on Afghan police training centre leaves dozens dead
Wave of Taliban suicide attacks on Afghan forces kills at least 74
(about 4 hours later)
The death toll in an ongoing suicide and gun attack on a police training centre in a south-east Afghan city has risen to 32 with more than 200 wounded, a hospital official has said.
At least 74 people have been killed in a wave of Taliban suicide attacks targeting police compounds and government facilities in the south, east and west of Afghanistan.
“The hospital is overwhelmed and we call on people to donate blood,” said Shir Mohammad Karimi, deputy health director in Gardez, the capital of Paktia province.
Among those killed was a provincial police chief. Scores of people, including police officers and civilians, were also wounded.
A separate attack in a neighbouring province on Tuesday left 15 security forces dead and 12 wounded, as militants step up their offensives following a ratcheting up in US airstrikes in a war-weary country marking 16 years of conflict this month.
The deputy interior minister, Murad Ali Murad, said the attacks on Tuesday had been the biggest this year.
The victims of the ongoing Gardez attack, which was claimed by the Taliban in a tweet, include women, students and police, officials said.
He told a press conference in Kabul that 71 people had been killed by insurgents in Ghazni and Paktia provinces.
“At first a suicide bomber detonated a car filled with explosives near the training centre, making way for a number of attackers to start their assault,” the interior ministry said in a statement.
In southern Paktia province, 21 police officers and 20 civilians were killed when suicide car bombers targeted a police compound in the provincial capital of Gardez. Among the wounded were 48 police officers and 110 civilians.
A battle between the attackers, armed with guns and suicide vests, and security forces is under way inside the centre, which is located near the Paktia police headquarters, it said. Fighting has been going on for more than four hours.
The provincial police chief, Toryalai Abdyani, was killed in the Paktia attack, Murad confirmed.
A local official said two car bombs had gone off near the compound, which also houses the provincial headquarters of the national police, border police and Afghan national army.
The interior ministry said that after the two cars had exploded in Gardez, five assailants with suicide belts had tried to storm the compound but had been killed by Afghan security forces.
“A group of gunmen have entered the compound and fighting is ongoing,” said Allah Mir Bahram, a member of the Paktia provincial council.
Gardez city hospital reported receiving at least 130 people wounded in the attack, a health ministry spokesman, Waheed Majroo, said.
Photos posted on Twitter appear to show two large plumes of smoke rising above the city, suggesting two bombs were detonated in the assault.
Hamza Aqmhal, a student at Paktia University, said he had heard a powerful blast that shattered the windows of the building he was in. The university is about 1.25 miles from the training academy, said Aqmhal, who was slightly injured by broken glass.
Paktia borders Pakistan’s militancy-plagued tribal areas where the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani network has a presence.
A lawmaker from Paktia, Mujeeb Rahman Chamkni, said that along with the provincial chief of police several of his staff had been killed in the attack. Most of the casualties were civilians who had come to the centre, which also serves as a passport office, Chamkni said.
The attack came hours after a US drone strike in Pakistan’s Kurram tribal district, part of which borders Paktia, killed at least 26 Haqqani militants, officials have said.
In southern Ghazni, suicide car bombers stormed a security compound in Andar district and killed 25 police officers and five civilians, Murad said. At least 15 people were wounded in the attack, including 10 police officers, he added.
Local officials said drones were still flying above Kurram after the attack, the deadliest targeting militants in the Pakistani tribal region this year.
Despite the high death toll, Murad said Afghan forces remained confident about their “readiness to fight terrorists and eliminate them from Afghanistan”.
In Kurram last week the Pakistani military rescued a US-Canadian family who had been abducted by militants in Afghanistan in 2012. The US president, Donald Trump, has said they were being held by the Haqqani network.
Arif Noori, a spokesman for the provincial governor in Ghazni, said the onslaught there had lasted nine hours. The bodies of 13 Taliban fighters were discovered after the attack, Noori added.
The extremist group has been blamed for carrying out spectacular attacks across Afghanistan since the US-led invasion in 2001 and is known for its frequent use of suicide bombers.
In western Farah province, the police chief, Abdul Maruf Fulad, said Taliban fighters had killed three police officers in an attack on a government compound in Shibkho district.
It was blamed for the truck bomb deep in the heart of the Afghan capital, Kabul, in May that killed about 150 people.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attacks.
The Haqqanis have also been accused of assassinating top Afghan officials and holding kidnapped westerners for ransom.
Murad said the militant group had sustained heavy losses over the past six months at the hands of Afghan forces and was seeking revenge.
These include the recently rescued hostages Joshua Boyle, a Canadian, his American wife Caitlan Coleman, and their three children – all born in captivity – as well as the US soldier Bowe Bergdahl, who was released in 2014.
Militants also targeted security forces in Ghazni on Tuesday, about 62 miles (100km) from Gardez, officials there said.
That attack followed the same pattern, with militant detonating an explosives-laden Humvee vehicle near a police headquarters and attackers storming the building, Haref Noori, the Ghazni governor’s spokesman, said.
Fifteen members of the security forces were killed and 12 wounded, the Ghazni police chief, Mohammad Zaman, said, adding that “dozens of Taliban” had also died.
The latest attacks come as four-way talks between Afghanistan, Pakistan, the United States and China were held on Monday in Oman with the aim of ending the Taliban’s 16-year insurgency.
