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Suicide Bomber Kills at Least 5 Afghan Soldiers in Kabul Suicide Bomber Kills at Least 5 Afghan Soldiers in Kabul
(about 4 hours later)
KABUL, Afghanistan — At least five Afghan soldiers were killed and a dozen others were wounded Thursday morning when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives near a bus full of service members in Kabul. KABUL, Afghanistan — A teenager evaded tight security and blew himself up in the auditorium of an elite French high school in Kabul Thursday evening, killing at least one other person and wounding more than a dozen people.
The suicide bomber was standing at the edge of a road next to a speed bump, waiting for the soldiers’ bus to slow down as it passed by, a witness said. It was the second suicide bombing of the day in the capital. Earlier, a young man standing at the edge of a road on the outskirts of the city detonated his explosives as a bus carrying Afghan troops passed by, killing five soldiers.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which took place around 7 a.m. on the eastern outskirts of the capital. The attacks shattered a relative calm in Kabul that had lasted more than a week. Before that, suicide bombers were striking frequently in the city, targeting a British Embassy vehicle, the headquarters of a small aid organization and a prominent women’s rights leader and member of Parliament, Shukria Barakzai, among other targets. One bomber managed to infiltrate Kabul Police Headquarters last month, apparently in an attempt to assassinate the police chief.
Last month, the Taliban launched waves of attacks here. Suicide bombers targeted a British Embassy vehicle and the headquarters of a small aid organization in the city. Roadside explosions struck soldiers and police officers. Suicide bombers also tried to assassinate a prominent women’s rights leader and member of Parliament, Shukria Barakzai, as well as the police chief of Kabul, although the Taliban have not publicly claimed responsibility for either of those attacks. Female students and girls’ schools have been targets of bomb attacks in the provinces, but before Thursday there had not been an attack against a school in Kabul in a long time.
The attacks unnerved residents, and many took to staying home when possible or avoiding crowds. But after more than 10 attacks in November, a period of relative quiet took hold, lasting more than a week. The attack occurred shortly after 5 p.m. at the Lycée Esteqlal, an elite French school that was founded in 1922.
While many of the recent attacks were against civilians or foreigners, the suicide attack on Thursday was directed at the Taliban’s most frequent target: Afghan security forces, whether soldiers or police officers. Gen. Mohammad Farid Afzali, the head of the investigative division of the Kabul Police, said that a suicide bomber who was 16 or 17 years old detonated explosives in the auditorium. It was not immediately clear what kind of event was taking place there at the time. The police said one person, a German national, was killed; police estimates of the wounded ranged from five to 20 people. The school is near the presidential palace.
The bus was on a road that cut across a steep hill in the Tangi Tarakhil area. In Herat Province in the west of the country, dozens of Taliban fighters attacked a government compound on Thursday, making a striking show of force in a region where the Taliban has generally been weaker than in other parts of the country. Soldiers, police officers and Afghan special forces pushed the Taliban fighters back and kept them out of the compound, which is in Shindand district in the southern part of Herat, according to Haji Ajab Gul, the district governor of Shindand. A local resident named Najib said in a telephone interview that the loudspeakers on mosques nearby, usually used to summon Muslims to prayer, were broadcasting warnings to stay indoors for safety.
A man who lives nearby, Abdul Layeq, said that as he was leaving his house he saw a Toyota Corolla pull to the side of the road, minutes ahead of the bus, and drop off a young man carrying a large bag. North of Kabul, an airstrike on Wednesday afternoon killed five people in Parwan Province. The American-led military coalition said the dead were enemy combatants, but the local district governor, Mohammad Sayed Sadiqi, maintained that they were teenagers and young men who “were studying in the area and waiting to attend evening prayers.”
Mr. Layeq said that based on the man’s outfit, he assumed the man was an office worker for one of Kabul’s many nongovernmental or Western organizations. But the man waited by the road and set off his parcel as the bus came alongside, said Mr. Layeq, himself a soldier with the Afghan National Army who works in the west of Kabul. A spokesman for coalition forces, Col. Brian Tribus, said that there would be an investigation into “allegations that civilian casualties were caused by this strike.”
“I couldn’t believe he was a suicide bomber,” Mr. Layeq said. The use of airstrikes and the civilian deaths they sometimes caused were major sources of friction between the previous Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, and American military commanders and politicians. The inauguration of a new president, Ashraf Ghani, in September led to an immediate improvement in relations as the American-led combat mission draws to a close at the end of the year.
The Ministry of Defense said that 12 soldiers were wounded. Mr. Layeq said he also saw two wounded civilians in a nearby car. On Jan. 1, a new security agreement between the United States and Afghanistan goes into effect that will result in a far more limited role for foreign troops. With that date approaching, the United States military handed over the last of its detainees in the country, all non-Afghans, to the Afghan government on Wednesday.
In a statement posted online, the Taliban said that the suicide bomber was named Hafiz Talaha and that he came from Wardak Province. “The Defense Department no longer operates detention facilities in Afghanistan nor maintains custody of any detainees,” Lt. Col. Myles B. Caggins III, a spokesman, said in an email message.
The move coincided with the release of a Senate committee report giving detailed accounts of abuse of detainees held at C.I.A.-run facilities in several countries, including Afghanistan.