At least 40 people have been killed and dozens wounded in a blast in Kabul near the offices of a news agency and a Shia cultural centre, the interior ministry has said. The explosion early on Thursday struck an area close to both the Afghan Voice news agency and Tebyan cultural centre, local media reported. Women and children were among those killed.
1TV News, quoting an interior ministry spokesman, said a suicide bomber was likely to have been behind the attack. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the Taliban has denied involvement. Mushtaq Rahim, a regional security expert, told Al Jazeera from Kabul that there were several members of the Afghan Shia community in the area. “They [Afghan Shia] have been targeted in Afghanistan throughout 2017,” he said.
In November, at least one security guard was killed as ISIL fighters stormed Shamshad TV, a private television station.
Earlier, in January 2016, after threats from the Taliban, a minibus carrying TOLOnews employees was bombed, killing seven people during the evening rush hour. More broadly, the Afghan capital has come under attack several times in 2017.
On March 8, more than 30 people were killed when gunmen dressed in white lab coats stormed a hospital in the centre of the city. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) claimed responsibility for that attack, but officials considered other groups could have been responsible.
On May 31, a truck bomb exploded near the diplomatic district, killing more than 150 people. It remains unclear who was behind the assault. On October 21, ISIL claimed responsibility for killing at least 39 people at a Shia mosque in Kabul.
SOURCE: Al Jazeera News
