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The death toll from a suicide attack in the Afghan capital has risen to at least 18 dead and 57 injured, including students, the Interior Ministry said.
Afghan security officials announced separately on Saturday (local time) that a senior al Qaeda commander had been killed in a recent operation in the east of the country.
Saturday’s explosion in the capital occurred in front of an educational center in a densely Shiite neighborhood in western Kabul, Dasht-e-Barchi.
Interior Ministry spokesman Tariq Arian says the attacker was attempting to enter the center when he was detained by security guards.
Mariam Zuhaib / AP
An Afghan receives treatment at a hospital after a suicide attack in Kabul, Afghanistan.
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According to Arian, the number of victims may increase even more, as relatives of the victims of the suicide bombing continue to search the different hospitals to which the injured have been taken.
No group claimed immediate responsibility for the attack. The Taliban rejected any connection to the attack.
An Isis affiliate claimed responsibility for a similar suicide attack at a school in August 2018, in which 34 students were killed. Inside Afghanistan, Isis has launched large-scale attacks against Shiite, Sikh and Hindu minorities, whom it considers apostates.
Hundreds of Sikhs and Hindus in Afghanistan fled the country in September after a gunman loyal to the militant group killed 25 members of the shrinking community in an attack on their part of a place of worship in Kabul.
Mariam Zuhaib / AP
Recently, there has been an upsurge in violence between the Taliban and Afghan forces in the country.
Meanwhile, the Afghan intelligence service said in a tweet that special forces killed Al Qaeda’s number two commander for the Indian subcontinent, Abu Muhsin al-Masri, in a recent operation in eastern Ghazni. The National Security Directorate did not immediately share more details about the operation.
Al-Masri was listed among the most wanted terrorists by the United States Department of Justice in 2018.
The United States signed a peace agreement with the Taliban in February, paving the way for the withdrawal of US troops from the conflict. US officials said the deal was also aimed at refocusing security efforts on fighting the Islamic State, which is a rival of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Recently, there has been an upsurge in violence between the Taliban and Afghan forces in the country, including as representatives of the two warring parties begin their own peace talks in Doha to end the decades-long war in Afghanistan.
Mariam Zuhaib / AP
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Earlier on Saturday, a roadside bomb killed nine people in eastern Afghanistan after it struck a minivan full of civilians, a local official said.
Ghazni province police spokesman Ahmad Khan Sirat said a second roadside bomb killed two policemen after it struck their vehicle that was heading towards the victims of the first explosion.
Sirat added that the attacks had injured several more and that the attacks were under investigation.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks. The provincial police spokesman claimed that the Taliban had planted the bomb.
