About 20 people were dead and dozens more were injured Tuesday in Kabul, Afghanistan, after a suicide bomber detonated explosives near the capital’s Supreme Court.
Najib Danish, a deputy spokesman for the interior ministry, told the Associated Press the suspect set off his bombs as a group of employees were exiting the court building for the day. Not all of the dead have been identified, and no organization has taken responsibility for the attack.
“When I heard a bang I rushed toward the Supreme Court’s parking lot to find my brother who works there,” witness Dad Khuda told Reuters. “Unfortunately, several people were killed and wounded.”
As the night wore on in Kabul, emergency workers in ambulances, police officers and concerned relatives flocked to the scene of the explosion. The Afghan Supreme Court, which was established in 2004, is located near a road that connects the airport to the United States embassy, Agence France Presse reported.
Tuesday’s attack followed a series of assaults by the Taliban, an Islamic fundamentalist group, including Jan. 10 bombing that killed 36 people and a September 2016 attack that killed more than 20 people. Just before Tuesday’s Supreme Court bombing, the Taliban used a roadside explosion to kill Abdul Khaliq, the No. 1 official in the Khak-e-Safed province of Farah, according to Stars and Stripes.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan declared Monday that the country had the highest-ever total of civilian deaths in a year in 2016. Nearly 3,500 civilians were killed in Afghanistan, and an additional 7,900 were injured.
“The killing and maiming of thousands of Afghan civilians is deeply harrowing and largely preventable,” UN official Tadamichi Yamamoto said in a news release. “All parties to the conflict must take immediate concrete measures to protect the ordinary Afghan men, women and children whose lives are being shattered.”
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