Afghanistan: Explosion shakes Kabul, causalities feared

An explosion on the third day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan shook Afghanistan capital on Wednesday. However, no causalities have been reported so far. “I can confirm an explosion in the Shahr-e Naw area of Kabul. We are checking the details,” Ferdaws Framurz, a spokesperson for the city’s police force, told news agency AFP.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it targeted the American NGO Counterpart International, which is working with the U.S. Agency for International Development in Afghanistan.

Last month, Taliban fighters had attacked a convoy carrying Afghanistan’s vice president Abdul Rashid Dostum, in an assault that left the former warlord unscathed but killed one of his bodyguards, an official told AFP.

Enayatullah Babur, Dostum’s former chief of staff, said the hour-long attack also left several others in the convoy wounded.

The attack occurred in the northern province of Balkh, where Dostum had held a rally earlier in the day.

On Twitter, a Taliban spokesman said the insurgent group had carried out the attack and claimed four of Dostum’s bodyguards had been killed.

Dostum, a powerful ethnic Uzbek leader, is notorious in Afghanistan for extreme barbarities and for repeatedly switching loyalties over 40 years of conflict.

Despite a catalogue of war crimes attached to his name and accusations of organising the rape and torture of a political rival, Dostum became Afghanistan’s first vice president in 2014.

Last year the Taliban announced a three-day ceasefire at the end of Ramadan after Ghani declared a unilateral truce for eight days earlier in the month.