Large explosion hits Kabul airport entrance

A auto bomb exploded at the entrance Kabul’s the worldwide airport Monday, killing at least five people in the latest bloodshed following a 24-hour blitz of Taliban bombings and attacks last week.

In a televised address Monday, Ghani said “we know they have sanctuaries there, we know they are active there”.

In what was apparently a reference to Pakistan, the President said, “We know exactly who wants to hinder peace in Afghanistan and why”. A series of Taliban attacks Friday killed more than 50 victims, including nine foreign nationals, and injured almost 400 others.

“I think we are seeing the demise of the Taliban”, said Haroon Mir, an analyst in Kabul.

Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) activists along with their chief Hafiz Saeed offered funeral prayers for the late Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar at the JuD headquarters in Lahore on Thursday.

The remarks are his toughest words against Pakistan since he took office, opened talks with Pakistan and then more recently sent representatives to peace talks with the Taliban in the Pakistani town of Murree.

There appears to be no easing in the intensity of the fighting between the Taliban and Afghan forces, which has caused almost 5,000 civilian casualties this year, according to a recent report by the United Nations.

The violence was a stark reminder of the difficulty of reviving a stalled peace process, conveying a no-compromise message from the Taliban following last week’s revelation of Mullah Mohammad Omar’s death and a dispute over the leadership of the insurgency.

Sources say that a vehicle bomb was used in the attack, which took place at the civilian entrance of the main airport in the capital on Monday.

A Taliban spokesman told the BBC that the suicide attack had targeted a convoy of foreigners, but it remains unclear whether the jihadis successfully hit their target.

At least five people were killed in Afghanistan’s capital, after an explosion on Monday at Kabul worldwide Airport.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation base attack killed one worldwide service member and eight Afghan contractors, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation spokesman Col. Brian Tribus said.

Pakistan last month hosted the first talks in more than two years between the two sides.

Ghani said he was sending a delegation of Afghan officials to Pakistan this week, the first high-level meeting between the countries since the Afghan-Taliban talks were called off.

Ghani’s outburst came a day after he spoke to Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif by the telephone to discuss the possibility of resumption of peace process between Kabul and the Afghan Taliban.

“These attacks demonstrate an extreme level of atrocity by terrorists against innocent and defenseless civilians”, said the Ministry of the Interior of Afghanistan.