Kabul bomb kills 5; Ghani warns Pakistan

“A suicide auto bomb attack at the entrance of Hamid Karzai worldwide Airport and has caused casualties both on civilians and security forces”, Danish said.

The attacks have followed a change of leadership in the Taliban and have dashed any hopes of an immediate resumption of peace talks with the government.

Pakistan, which has in the past denied supporting the Taliban, said it remains committed to maintaining good relations with Kabul and that after losing tens of thousands of its own people to terrorist attacks, it can feel the “pain and anguish of the brotherly people” of Afghanistan over the latest attacks there.

The Pakistani prime minister was in Kabul for the first time since Ashraf Ghani took over as president of Afghanistan, their interaction coming against the backdrop of an earlier meeting in Qatar between Afghan government and Taliban officials. “The incidents of the past two months in general and the recent days in particular show that the suicide training camps and the bomb making facilities used to target and murder our innocent people still operate, as in the past, in Pakistan“. A spokesperson for the Afghan Ministry of Public Health said four people were killed and 17 were wounded.

Afghan President’s stern remarks to Pakistan got the US asking the leaders of the two nations to work together to combat violent extremism. “We need all those activities to be stopped”, Ghani said in a nationwide television address. The Afghan leader said Kabul would take charge of negotiations with the Taliban and announced that an Afghan delegation would travel to Pakistan on Thursday to discuss counter-terrorism.

Friday’s bombings were the first major attacks since Mullah Akhtar Mansour was named as the new Taliban chief last week in an acrimonious power transition after the insurgents confirmed the death of longtime leader Mullah Omar. “If our people continue to be killed, relations lose meaning and I hope it will not happen”. The Afghan president urged Pakistan to imagine that the spate of attacks rocking Kabul over the weekend had occurred in Islamabad, carried out by groups with bases in Afghanistan: “Will you have looked at us as friends or enemies?”

At least five people were killed and several injured after a suicide attack at the civilian entrance of the Kabul airport in Afghanistan.

But in a volte face late Monday, Mr. Ghani slammed Pakistan for failing to rein in the Taliban as peace talks falter and insurgents ramp up attacks that are a test for beleaguered Afghan security forces.

The mobilisation of militias represents a complete departure from previous government efforts to disarm these groups, blamed for devastating Afghanistan during the civil war in the 1990s and setting the stage for a Taliban takeover.