Twin Terrorist Attacks in Afghanistan

Local Editor

A huge explosion had been reported near Kabul International Airport, close to the US Embassy and Supreme Court, numerous reports said, adding that military vehicles were in the area where the blast occurred.

The blast took place in Wazir Akbar Khan, one of the wealthiest parts of the Afghan capital, where the US and Canadian embassies and other diplomatic compounds are located. A busy shopping district is also nearby.

Further, Kabul International Airport, 5 kilometers from the city center, also serves as one of the country's largest military bases.

Twitter users wrote they saw several ambulances that reportedly were transporting at least four people, either wounded or dead, from the scene of the blast. It was believed to be suicide car bombing.

In a related notion, a suicide truck bomb in southern Afghanistan killed two civilians and wounded more than 40, officials said, in the latest attack since the Taliban began their annual offensive.

The attacker detonated a lorry loaded with explosives at the gate of the police headquarters in Lashkar Gah, the capital of volatile Helmand province.

Nonetheless, the Helmand blast came less than two days after 11 soldiers were killed in a Taliban ambush in the normally relatively peaceful western province of Herat.

"It was a suicide truck bomber detonating his vehicle at the gate of police headquarters," provincial police spokesman Farid Ahmad Obaid declared.

"Our initial reports show 40 wounded, two killed," he said, adding that all of the casualties were civilians.

Provincial spokesman Omar Zhwak confirmed the attack.

"The blast was very powerful. Most of the wounded people are civilians who were hit by broken glass inside their homes," he said.

A doctor at the emergency hospital in Lashkar Gah said 40 civilians were brought to the hospital.

Though, there was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. But the Taliban, who launched their annual spring-summer offensive in late April, vowed nationwide attacks in what was expected to be the bloodiest summer for a decade.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team