Afghan capital hit by assaults close to ex-PM Hekmatyar’s workplace, Pakistan Embassy By Reuters

© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Former Afghan warlord and presidential candidate Gulbuddin Hekmatyar speaks in the course of the presidential election debate at TOLO TV studio in Kabul, Afghanistan September 25, 2019. REUTERS/Omar Sobhani/File Photograph

KABUL (Reuters) -One particular person was killed on Friday in a suicide bomb assault close to the Kabul workplace of the Hezb-e-Islami occasion, former Afghan Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, mentioned, the identical day as an obvious failed assassination try on the Pakistan Embassy.

A number of attackers have been killed and several other guards injured within the suicide bomb assault, in line with three Hezb-e-Islami sources and one supply with the ruling Taliban.

Occasion chief Hekmatyar mentioned in a video assertion that one particular person had been killed and two injured.

“I guarantee my countrymen, a failed try occurred right here by those that have finished it many occasions however have failed,” Hekmatyar mentioned, including it was not but clear who was behind the assault.

“It can’t decrease our morale or our resistance… we’ll stand with our nation,” he mentioned.

Kabul police and the inside ministry didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.

Pakistan’s international workplace mentioned its embassy in Kabul had come underneath assault concentrating on the pinnacle of mission, Ubaid-ur-Rehman Nizamani, who escaped unscathed whereas a guard was critically injured. Taliban authorities didn’t instantly reply to request for remark.

Nizamani arrived in Kabul final month to take up the position at one of many few embassies that had remained operational all through the interval after the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August 2021.

The assault on the Hezb-e-Islami occasion workplace occurred close to a mosque the place senior occasion leaders current have been unharmed, in line with the occasion assertion.

One Taliban and one occasion supply mentioned a automobile belonging to the attackers and filled with explosives had detonated close to the workplace. Firing happened and two attackers have been killed whereas attempting to enter the mosque, they mentioned.

Hekmatyar mentioned the attackers have been carrying suicide explosive vests and that one was carrying a girl’s burqa.

A number of bombing and taking pictures assaults have taken place in Afghanistan in latest months, a few of which have been claimed by Islamic State militants. A blast at a madrassa on Wednesday in northern Afghanistan killed no less than 15 folks.

The hardline Islamist Taliban, who seized energy after U.S.-led international forces withdrew in August 2021, have mentioned they’re targeted on securing the nation.

Hekmatyar based Hezb-e-Islami within the mid-Nineteen Seventies as one of many principal mujahideen teams combating the Eighties Soviet invasion of Afghanistan from its base in Pakistan. He held the workplace of prime minister twice in the course of the Nineteen Nineties.