SHAFAQNA- A Taliban truck bomb has killed at least 20 people and wounded 95 others when it exploded near a hospital in southern Afghanistan.
A senior defence ministry official in Kabul said the fighters wanted to target a training base for the country’s powerful security agency National Directorate of Security (NDS), but parked the explosives-laden vehicle outside a hospital gate nearby.
“The bomb was huge and it was carried by a mini-truck,” said a senior defence ministry official in the capital, Kabul, speaking on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to speak to media, euronews told.
The Taliban, who have been carrying out near-daily attacks since peace talks with the US collapsed this month, said the target was a nearby government intelligence building in Qalat, the capital of Zabul province, theguardian reported.
Several women, children, health workers and patients in the hospital were critically injured the blast.
Residents, many of whom had come to see their sick family members, used shawls and blankets to carry the wounded inside the destroyed hospital building, while authorities scrambled to take the worst of the wounded to hospitals in nearby Kandahar, according to aljazeera.
The Taliban has warned in recent days that its fighters will intensify their campaign against the Afghan government and foreign forces to dissuade people from voting in the September 28 poll. President Ghani is running for a second five-year term.
More than 9 million Afghans are expected to vote in the presidential election, during which the government has committed more than 70,000 security forces across Afghanistan to protection duties, Cyprus mentioned.