An attack on Afghanistan’s largest military hospital on Tuesday left at least 25 dead and 50 wounded in Kabul, where the Taliban faces a series of actions by rival terrorist group Islamic State.
A Taliban official said the first explosion occurred at the entrance to Sardar Mohammad Dawood Khan hospital, and the second in the vicinity, both followed by gunfire, according to a witness.
The authorship of the action, carried out by a suicide bomber and a sniper, was assumed by the Islamic State.
According to a Taliban spokesman, all those involved in the attack were killed before entering the hospital. Earlier, another representative of the group had said that one of the attackers had been captured.
The bombing is the latest episode in a string of attacks in the country since the Taliban regained power in mid-August after invading Kabul and seeing Western troops leave Afghanistan.
Inside the hospital, a medical source told the AFP news agency that he heard a loud explosion and then the sound of gunfire. The witness claims to believe that the attackers were going from room to room, just as happened the other time the place was attacked, in 2017.
When the hospital, which treated deposed government agents and soldiers wounded by the Taliban, was raided four years ago, men dressed in medical staff uniforms killed dozens. For hours, attackers went into rooms shooting patients or stabbing them when they ran out of ammunition.
At the time, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the action, even though survivors accused the Taliban.
Even though both extremist groups are Sunni and radical, the Islamic State and the Taliban are rivals. The Afghan branch of the jihadist faction, the Islamic State-Khorasan (EI-K), has claimed responsibility for four major attacks in the country since the Taliban’s return to power, including explosions at Shiite mosques and the attack on Kabul airport during withdrawal en masse led by Western countries.
The group claimed to be responsible for the latest attack in the Afghan capital, on Oct. 3, when at least five people died in an explosion that targeted the Id Gah mosque.
The first explosion on Tuesday occurred at 1 pm local time. Images posted on social networks show black smoke rising into the sky right after the detonation. Qari Saeed Khosty, a spokesman for the Ministry of Interior, said Taliban special forces had come to the scene to protect the area.
The streets near the “green zone”, where the former embassy headquarters of Western countries were located, were blocked, and the Taliban carried out search operations. The noise of sirens echoed throughout the region as ambulances arrived at the scene. In the sky, helicopters flew over the city.
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