Janjivan Bureau / Kabul : International terrorist group Taliban massive suicide car bomb attack killed at least 40 people and injured about 150 at a police checkpoint in the Afghan capital Kabul on Saturday, in an area near foreign embassies and government buildings, officials said.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for that attack.
Afghan officials say at least 40 people have been killed and some 140 others wounded in a massive suicide car bomb attack that targeted a crowded area in central Kabul. Health Ministry spokesman, Wahidullah Majrooh, said the toll was likely to rise as the victims were still being brought in to hospitals across the city.
Kabul deputy police chief, Haqnawaz Haqyar, said that victims were still being brought in to hospitals across the city.
Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, claimed that the militant group was behind the attack.
According to the Interior Ministry the attacker used an ambulance to pass through checkpoints.
“He passed through the first checkpoint saying he was taking a patient to the [nearby] Jumhuryat hospital and at the second checkpoint he was recognized and blew his explosive-laden car,” Interior Ministry deputy spokesman Nasrat Rahimi told the AFP news agency.
Images posted on social media show a plume of grey smoke rising from the blast area. Eyewitnesses say that buildings hundreds of meters away were shaken by the force of the explosion.
The attack comes a week after an assault on the Intercontinental Hotel in the city that killed at least 25 people.
Elsewhere in Afghanistan, a suicide car bomber targeted security forces in the southern province of Helmand, wounding at least six people on January 27, local officials said.
Provincial government spokesman Omar Zwak said that the suicide bomber tried to enter the Qari Posta security checkpoint in the Nad Ali district.
The attacker was spotted by security forces who opened fire on him, but he still managed to detonate his explosives, Zwak said.
“It is a massacre,” said Dejan Panic coordinator in Afghanistan for the Italian aid group Emergency, which runs a nearby trauma hospital. In a message on Twitter, the group said more than 50 wounded had been brought in to that hospital alone.
Mirwais Yasini, a member of parliament who was nearby when the explosion occurred, said the ambulance approached the checkpoint, close to an office of the High Peace Council and several foreign embassies, and blew up.
He said a number of people were lying on the ground. People helped walking wounded away as ambulances with sirens wailing inched their way through the traffic-clogged streets of the city centre.
A plume of grey smoke rose from the blast area in the city centre and buildings hundreds of metres away were shaken by the force of the explosion.
