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Afghanistan: 40 killed, 100 injured in Taliban attack on Kabul

SHAFAQNA- Forty people including children killed and around 100 more injured in an attack on Monday by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The Taliban took responsibility for a multifaceted strike in Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, which included a car bomb and a lengthy gun fight. A private war museum, a television station, schools, and sports agencies were damaged by the Taliban’s blast.

Nooria Nazhat, the spokesperson for Afghanistan’s ministry of education, told the New York Times that at least 51 students were wounded when the car bomb that initiated the attack at rush hour damaged two school buildings.

“These children were in the classrooms when the blast shattered the glass windows. All injured children were rushed out of their schools,” said Nazhat.

Afghans decried the attack on social media, with many sharing photos of the injured children. Some photos purportedly taken at a hospital showed wounded, stunned children in school uniforms, still clutching books as they arrived for treatment.

Onno van Manen, Save the Children’s Afghanistan country director, said his organisation found that a “staggering 80 percent of conflict-related child deaths” in the country are the result of explosive weapons.

“Afghanistan is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a child,” he said. “Children are once again paying the price for nearly two decades of conflict in Afghanistan”, Aljazeera told.

That’s tragic, not least because just two days earlier Afghan National Security Adviser Hamdullah Mohib tweeted, “Our youngest citizens have the most to gain from peace and security.”

Our youngest citizens have the most to gain from peace and security and that is what we are working to achieve. #Afghanistan #Peace #Future pic.twitter.com/t3CA4AXf6Y

— Hamdullah Mohib (@hmohib) June 29, 2019

A gun fight between Taliban militants and Afghan security forces lasted around eight hours after the attackers bombed the ministry of defense and made their way inside the compound. An unknown number of security forces and all five insurgents are dead.

It’s likely the death and injury toll will continue to rise in the next few hours and days.

For many who witnessed the attack, it was terrible. “We were sitting inside the office when the world turned upside down on us,” Zaher Usman, who works at Afghanistan’s culture ministry just 500 feet from the blast, told the AFP on Monday. “When I opened my eyes, the office was filled with smoke and dust and everything was broken, my colleagues were screaming” , vox reported.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has condemned the attack, calling it a crime against humanity.

Mohib told me hours after the assault that “It was an indiscriminate attack that took the lives of many innocent civilians, many of whom were kids. We condemn it in the strongest terms.”

“We face a brutal and cruel enemy who has no regard for any values or principles,” he continued. “I visited some of the victims tonight in the hospital, and I saw children as young as 7 years old. We are grieved by the casualties but we stand strong in defiance of our people, our country and our fundamental rights of freedom.”

 

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