Afghan President Slams Pakistan Over Kabul Attacks

“Pakistan condemns these deadly attacks in Afghanistan in the strongest terms”, the ministry said, adding that Pakistan will continue to support and facilitate an “Afghan-led and Afghan-owned peace and reconciliation process” with the Taliban.

An Afghan policeman inspects a damaged vehicle at the site of a auto bomb blast at the entrance gate to Kabul airport. Taliban said vehicles of foreign forces were the target.

A wave of attacks on the Afghan army and police and U.S. special forces in Kabul have killed at least 50 people and wounded hundreds, dimming hopes that the Taliban might be weakened by a leadership struggle after Mullah Omar’s death.

Ghani further claimed that terrorism’s safe havens and bomb-making factories exist in Pakistan. Clearly Mr. Ghani had misread the “Idea of Pakistan” as the body count in the wave of attacks in Kabul mounted.

Five civilians were killed and 17 people wounded, including a woman and a child, said Wahidullah Mayar, a spokesman for the public health ministry.

“We will make peace with those who know about humanity, Islam and the meaning of Afghanistan and do not destroy their country for the interests of outsiders”, he told reporters. There had been a slight lull after internal rifts over Taliban leadership, as news of their leader’s death, kept secret for two years, was leaked last month. “The training center of suicide attackers are in Pakistan, the undeclared war should come to end and this is the basic demand of Afghanistan“.

Since coming to power last year, Ghani has actively courted Pakistan in what experts call a calculated gambit to pressure the militants to the negotiating table.

On Saturday, Afghanistan’s Ambassador to Pakistan Janan Mosazai had called on JUI-S leader Maulana Samiul Haq and requested him to raise his voice for the dialogue process between Kabul and the Afghan Taliban.

Elsewhere in Afghanistan, a Taliban attack on Sunday killed up to 29 people in the northern province of Kunduz, which has become a key battleground in the fight against the militants.

Pakistan has taken note of the contents of a press conference by the President of Afghanistan held in Kabul on Monday.

In the first attack, a powerful truck bomb tore through the centre of Kabul just after midnight on Friday, killing 15 civilians and wounding 240 others.

Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had pledged a new approach after a bloody December 16 attack by the group’s Pakistani branch on a military school in Peshawar.

The United Nations published a study last week that showed civilian casualties in the war-torn country have hit a record-high in the first six months of 2015.