Kabul bombings leave 50 dead and hundreds wounded

While nine casualties were reported at the US base, Camp Integrity, including one global service member and eight Afghan contractors Nato-led coalition forces confirmed.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said his group claimed responsibility for the attack on the police academy.

Observers say the escalating violence demonstrates Mullah Mansour’s attempt to boost his image among Taliban cadres and drive attention away from internal divisions over his leadership. Most of the killed were civilians or young police cadets, with one worldwide service member also among the dead.

The improvement came amidst vast scale military operations against Taliban agitators over the war-torn country that were dispatched after Afghan National Security Strengths assumed full liability of security from US-drove remote powers in January 2015.

Such a complex and coordinated set of attacks suggests a message from the Taliban at an especially delicate time following last week’s revelation of Mullah Mohammad Omar’s death and the subsequent leadership dispute.

“Last night’s attack was a cowardly terrorist attack against civilians”, presidential spokesman Sayed Zafar Hashemi told reporters.

A suicide bomber on Friday attack police academy in Afghan capital killing no fewer than 60 people with scores of people sustaining various degree of injuries.

The assertion quoted Jalaluddin Haqqani, the top of the Haqqani Community, a Pakistan-based outfit blamed for scores of complicated assaults on U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation forces in Afghanistan, as calling for unity. Previously seen as open to reviving peace talks, the Taliban have since pledged to press on with the insurgency that has killed and wounded hundreds this yr.

The ensuing explosion destroyed residential areas and businesses, Police Chief Abdul Rahman Rahimi said.

Either way, the results of these attacks that killed more than 70, do not bode well for the Afghan government who have been trying to negotiate a peace agreement with the Taliban. The series of attacks included a truck bomb in the center of Kabul and a suicide attack on the local police academy.

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

The U.S.-led coalition formally ended its combat mission at the end of last year, leaving Afghan troops nearly on their own against a resilient Taliban insurgency.

Michael Semple of the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation and Social Justice at Queens University Belfast told CNN that Mansour’s rise may bode poorly for the peace talks.

The United Nations mission in Afghanistan said Friday was the most violent day since it began recording civilian casualties in 2009, with 355 civilians killed or injured.