At Least 33 Dead in Afghanistan Suicide Bombing
A suicide bombing in Jalalabad on Saturday killed at least 33 people and wounded another 105, the Associated Press reports. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said that the Islamic State had taken responsibility.
According to the New York Times, the attack took place as a crowd of people waiting to collect their pay at a branch of the Kabul Bank. Police said all the victims were civilians.
This was only the second of three bombs that exploded in Jalalabad on Saturday morning, the Times reports. The first—a planted bomb, not a suicide attacker—detonated at a religious shrine, wounding two; the third was found by police in a motorcycle outside a branch of the Central Bank of Afghanistan. It was detonated under controlled conditions.
The BBC reports that a spokesman claiming to represent ISIS said the group had perpetrated the attack, although the British news agency was very careful to distance itself from the claim:
Shahidullah Shahid, who claims to be a spokesman for Islamic State (IS) in Afghanistan, said the group was behind the attack on the bank.
He also named a man who he said was the attacker. The BBC cannot confirm either claim. If confirmed, it would be Islamic State’s first major attack in Afghanistan.
Mr Shahid was a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban until he was fired for pledging allegiance to IS last year.
The Taliban, meanwhile, has disavowed the attacks, denying their involvement in three different languages, the Times reports. “On ISIS we don’t comment,” the Taliban spokesman for eastern Afghanistan, Zabiullah Mujahid, told the paper.
“We haven’t commented on them in the past and we will not say anything now. We are responsible for the war in this country, and that is all we can comment and give views on.”
The Taliban would investigate the attack, Mujahid said: “Then I will comment and say who was behind it.”
Update, 11:40 a.m. – The Associated Press has video of the bombing’s aftermath.
Photo credit: AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.