At least seven people and four terrorists killed in a suicide blast that rocked Afghanistan’s capital on Saturday, a day after hopes for all encompassing peace talks collapsed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A suicide blast rocked \nAfghanistan’s capital Saturday during a gun battle with security forces,\n officials said, killing at least seven people a day after hopes for \nall-encompassing peace talks collapsed. At least eight people were \nwounded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Police chief Gen. Sayed Mohammad Roshandil said the \nbomber blew himself up outside the Telecommunications Ministry, clearing\n the way for four gunmen to enter the building and the heavily guarded \ngovernment compound in central Kabul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nasart Rahimi, a spokesman \nfor the Interior Ministry, said four civilians and three soldiers were \nkilled during the attack. Eight civilians were wounded, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wahidullah\n Mayar, spokesman for the Public Health Ministry, said the wounded \npeople were evacuated to hospitals, three of them women.No one \nimmediately claimed responsibility for the attack. Both Taliban \ninsurgents and the Islamic State group are active in eastern Afghanistan\n and have previously claimed attacks in Kabul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Taliban denied\n involvement. Rahimi said the security operation ended at the Ministry \nof Telecommunication “after all four attackers were shot and killed by \nAfghan security forces.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The attack came a day after \nAfghan-to-Afghan peace talks in Qatar were cancelled. It would have \nmarked the first time that Taliban and Kabul government officials sat \ntogether to negotiate an end to the war in Afghanistan and a withdrawal \nof U.S. troops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Afghan president Ashraf Ghani strongly condemned \nthe attack in a statement, saying the enemies of Afghanistan, by \ntargeting civil servants, are trying to create terror among the people. \nRahimi said security forces blocked all roads near the attack site and \nthat forced shot and killed four additional suicide bombers before the \nattackers could reach their target of the nearby central post office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He\n said as many as 2,700 government employees and civilians were rescued \nby security forces after being stuck in several government buildings \nincluding the central post office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An employee of the \nTelecommunication Ministry who was rescued, Hamid Popalzai, said “an \nexplosion happened and then we heard the sound of gunfire and more \nexplosions.” He added that a large number of people were inside the \nministry, both women and men, when the attack started.\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At least seven people and four terrorists killed in a suicide blast that rocked Afghanistan’s capital on Saturday, a day after hopes for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59611,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59610"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59612,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59610\/revisions\/59612"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}