Following the surge in terror attacks in the middle east, a car bomb hidden in an ambulance has killed nearly 100 people and wounded about 158 in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Saturday when it blew up at a police checkpoint.
This is coming just mere days after an attack on the Intercontinental Hotel, one of the most prominent hotels in the city.
The Taliban have owned up to orchestrating Saturday’s suicide blast as well as the attack on the Intercontinental Hotel a week earlier in which more than 20 people were killed.
Mirwais Yasini, a member of parliament and an eyewitness described the scene:
“An ambulance approached the checkpoint and blew up. The target was apparently an interior ministry building nearby.
Buildings hundreds of meters away were shaken by the force of the blast, which left torn bodies strewn on the street amid piles of rubble, debris and wrecked cars.”
Although it was on a Saturday, in Afghanistan Saturday is not counted as a weekend and so a lot of people were affected by the blast
Another eyewitness Alam stated:
“I was sitting in the office when the explosion went off, all the windows shattered, the building collapsed and everything came down.”
“It’s a massacre,” said Dejan Panic, coordinator in Afghanistan for the Italian aid group Emergency, which runs a nearby trauma hospital that treated dozens of wounded.
Ministry officials have blamed the attack on the Haqqani network, a militant group affiliated with the Taliban.
Due to this attack President Ashraf Ghani and his U.S. allies, would increase its air strikes against the Taliban and other militant groups, aiming to break a stalemate and force the insurgents to the negotiating table.
The U.S.-led international force in Afghanistan reaffirmed its support for the Afghan government and armed forces in their “difficult and dangerous work”, adding that none of its members had been killed or wounded in the blast.
However, the Taliban have denied speculation that they have been weakened by the new strategy.
AMBULANCE AT CHECKPOINT