KABUL (SW) – The Taliban have threatened that last evening’s car bombing in Kabul was beginning of retaliatory operations against key figures and leaders of the government.
Interior Ministry spokesman Mirwais Stanekzai has said at least eight people, including a woman, were killed and 20 others were injured in the clashes following the car bombing near residence of the acting defense minister Gen. Bismillah Muhammadi last evening. Most of those killed and wounded were civilians, he said.
The acting Minister of Defense, General Bismillah Mohammadi, also said in a video that he and his family members were not harmed in the attack. He added, however, that a number of his bodyguards had been injured in the attack.
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The Interior Ministry spokesman also said that more than 80 people who had been taken hostage by the assailants or were trapped in houses near the site of the attack had been rescued by special police forces.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. The group said it had targeted an important meeting of the acting defense minister with a suicide bomber. The Taliban called the attack “the beginning of a retaliatory operation against key Afghan figures and government leaders” who have ordered the attacks on the insurgents in the provinces.
Kabul has not witnessed such attacks in recent months. This is the first time a car bomb has exploded in Kabul since the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan began on May 1.
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