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Kabul blast kills and wounds scores of people Bomb hidden in ambulance kills dozens in Kabul
(about 2 hours later)
Bomb hidden in ambulance explodes at police checkpoint in Afghan capital Attacker passed first checkpoint by claiming he had a patient, then detonated explosives
Reuters in Kabul Emma Graham-Harrison
Sat 27 Jan 2018 10.40 GMT Sat 27 Jan 2018 13.19 GMT
Last modified on Sat 27 Jan 2018 11.06 GMT First published on Sat 27 Jan 2018 10.40 GMT
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A bomb hidden in an ambulance has killed and wounded scores of people at an Afghan police checkpoint in an area of Kabul near foreign embassies and government buildings, officials said. A bomb hidden in an ambulance in Kabul has killed at least 63 people and injured more than 150, the latest in a string of high-profile and deadly attacks in Afghanistan.
The health ministry spokesman Wahid Majroh said at least 40 had been killed and 140 wounded in the attack on Saturday. The explosives were detonated at a police checkpoint where the streets are often crowded with people waiting to visit nearby offices, and vendors serving them.
“It is a massacre,” said Dejan Panic, the coordinator for the Italian aid organisation Emergency. In a message on Twitter, the group said more than 50 wounded had been brought to a nearby trauma hospital it runs. Witnesses said bodies were strewn across the pavement. “It’s a massacre,” said Dejan Panic, a coordinator for the nearby Emergency hospital, run by an Italian charity, where many victims were taken for treatment.
Mirwais Yasini, a politician who was nearby when the explosion occurred, said the ambulance blew up as it approached the checkpoint near an office of the Afghan High Peace Council and several foreign embassies. He said a number of people were lying on the ground. The death toll given by interior ministry spokesman, Najee Danish, rose rapidly in the wake of the blast, and may climb further. Most of the dead are thought to be people who were standing near the ambulance.
Smoke rose from the blast area in the centre of the capital and buildings hundreds of metres away were shaken by the explosion. Although the force of the blast shook buildings hundreds of metres away, it is likely to have caused less damage to heavily fortified government buildings and embassies in the area.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility but the explosion came amid heightened security alerts following an attack on the Intercontinental hotel a week ago. Responsibility for that attack, which killed more than 20 people, was claimed by the Taliban. The interior ministry and the European Union and Dutch embassies are among the buildings along the street that was targeted. The attacker passed a first checkpoint by claiming he was rushing a patient to a nearby checkpoint, and then detonated his suicide bomb at a second checkpoint.
The attack came a week after Taliban attackers stormed the city’s high-end Intercontinental hotel, killing at least 22 people, and four days after an Isis suicide bomber attacked the offices of the Save the Children charity in eastern Afghanistan.
AfghanistanAfghanistan
South and Central AsiaSouth and Central Asia
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