One person was killed and 17 others wounded on Sunday (June 2) in three successive blasts in Kabul, Afghan officials said, capping a murderous week of mayhem across the city.
Among the wounded was an Afghan journalist who appeared to have been live-streaming the aftermath of the first explosion when a second bomb went off. The events started with the detonation of a sticky bomb — a growing menace in Kabul, where insurgents and criminals slap magnetic bombs on the underside of vehicles. The charge had been placed under a bus carrying officials headed to the Kabul Education University, interior ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi said.
In the immediate aftermath, two more bombs that had been planted by the side of the road went off, he added. “In total, one Afghan civilian was martyred and 17 others, including a local journalist and five Afghan forces, have been slightly wounded,” Rahimi said.
Health ministry spokesman Wahidullah Mayar confirmed the toll. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but both the Taliban and the Islamic State group have carried out recent blasts.
According to a video circulating on social media, the journalist was hit in the leg by the second bomb. Last year, nine journalists including AFP Kabul’s chief photographer Shah Marai were killed in a secondary explosion after rushing to the scene of an initial blast.
Even though the Taliban and the US are set to begin a new round of peace talks in Doha this month, violence across Afghanistan continues unabated, with civilians often bearing the brunt of the bloodshed.
On Friday, a Taliban car bomber killed at least four Afghan civilians and lightly wounded four US troops in an attack on a US convoy in Kabul. A day earlier, at least six people were killed and 16 more wounded in an IS-claimed suicide blast outside a military academy in the capital. And eight Afghan police were killed on Saturday and seven others wounded in a suicide attack in the eastern Ghazni city, provincial police spokesman Ahmad Khan Seera told AFP.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani had proposed a nationwide ceasefire at the start of Ramadan early last month, but the Taliban rejected the offer. Last year, the Taliban observed a three-day ceasefire over Eid and many Afghans — exhausted by decades of war and violence — had pinned their hopes on another truce this year. Taliban head Haibatullah Akhundzada said on Saturday there would be no “cold water” poured on the insurgents military efforts.