Security beefed up in Kabul after multiple bomb attacks

Explosions and gunfire also erupted when Camp Integrity, a US special forces base in Kabul, came under attack late Friday, killing nine people, including a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation service member.

The radical Islamist insurgents claimed responsibility for both the police academy attack and the battle at the US special forces base, though not for the truck bomb.

The attacks “demonstrate again the insurgency’s complete disregard for the lives of innocent Afghans”.

“Such actions have no justification”.

Nobody has but claimed duty for the explosion, although officers have indicated they believed the Taliban have been behind it. The Taliban typically don’t declare to have organized assaults that kill giant numbers of civilians, particularly ladies and youngsters.

Observers in Washington had interpreted Kabul’s announcement as an effort to persuade a rudderless Taliban movement to give up militancy and work with the Afghan government. More than 280 people – including at least 30 children – were wounded in total. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

One Afghan official said that the majority of the victims were members of illegal armed groups that had clashed with security forces as well as with local Taliban groupings in the past.

In the day’s first attack, at 1 a.m., a massive truck bomb driven by a suicide attacker blew up in the center of Kabul, killing 15 people and wounding hundreds, almost all of them civilians, according to senior Afghan officials.

The incident, which comes as cadets were returning to the academy after their two-day weekend, marks a serious breach of security at a premier training institute for Afghan security forces.

But this week saw the most devastating attacks in years as Mullah Akhtar Mansour was named as the new Taliban chief in an acrimonious power transition after the insurgents confirmed the death of longtime leader Mullah Omar. The blast flattened a city block and left a 10-meter (30-foot) crater in the ground.

“Peace negotiators need someone to talk to”, he said.

In a recently released audiotape that purports to be from Mansour, the new leader denies that the group is attempting to work toward peace.

“Ambassador Rice and Ms. Monaco each reaffirmed U.S. support for Afghanistan as it confronts terrorists who target innocent civilians and threaten the stability and security of Afghanistan“, the White House said in its statement.

There appears to be no easing in the intensity of the fighting between the Taliban and Afghan forces, which has caused nearly 5,000 civilian casualties this year, according to a recent report by the United Nations. The death toll was likely to rise as rescue workers sifted through the remains of homes, he added.

The health ministry said the number of wounded could run even higher, with most suffering injuries from flying glass.