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Central Kabul hit by massive car bomb Central Kabul hit by massive truck bomb
(35 minutes later)
A powerful car bomb rattled houses across central Kabul in the early hours of Friday morning, police and interior ministry officials said, but the target was not immediately clear. A powerful truck bomb has torn through the centre of the Afghan capital Kabul, killing at least eight people and wounding over a hundred, police and health ministry officials said.
“Moments ago there was a car bomb in the Shah Shahid area. Civilian casualties are feared,” Afghanistan’s deputy interior minister General Mohammad Ayub Salangi tweeted. “A truck bomb detonated close to an army compound,” said the Kabul police chief, Abdul Rahman Rahimi.
A hospital official said their facility had been flooded with patients, including many women and children. Most were arriving on foot and were being treated for superficial injuries, the official said. A western security source said the target was probably a compound used by Afghan security forces in the area and as many as 15 people were killed in the blast. At least eight bodies had been counted by the police, Rahimi said, while 128 people had been wounded in the blast early on Friday morning.
Dozens were wounded by debris and glass shattering in the heavily populated area. Cars parked on roads in the vicinity of the blast were damaged for at least a hundred metres, said a Reuters witness.
It was an unusually powerful blast in a city that is frequently targeted by the Taliban and other militants seeking to destabilise the Afghan government.
The capital is heavily guarded by the army and police. While magnet bombs or suicide attacks have become a weekly occurrence, large truck bombs have rarely penetrated the city’s outskirts.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which sent shockwaves across the centre of the capital and ripped through homes and shops. A Western security source said that the target was probably a compound used by Afghan intelligence officials in the area and that as many as 15 people had been killed.
An official at the emergency hospital in Kabul said the facility had been flooded with patients, including many women and children. Most were arriving on foot, the official said, and were being treated for superficial wounds. He said doctors had already started operating on the more severe cases.
The war between the foreign-backed government and the Taliban has intensified since the Nato combat mission ended last year and most foreign troops were withdrawn.
Clashes are reported every day and civilians are frequently caught in crossfire. Almost 5,000 civilians have been wounded or killed in the first six months of 2015 as a result of the conflict, according to the United Nations.