KABUL: At least two explosions followed by gunfire hit Afghanistan’s biggest military hospital in Kabul, killing 15 people and wounding over 34 people, witnesses and Taliban officials said on Tuesday.
Interior ministry spokesman Qari Saeed Khosty said the explosions took place at the entrance of the 400-bed Sardar Mohammad Daud Khan hospital in central Kabul. “Security forces are deployed to the area,” he added.
There was no confirmation of casualty numbers but a Taliban security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there were at least 15 dead and 34 wounded. Taliban officials claimed that special forces arrived soon after and killed the remaining attackers.
A health worker at the hospital, who managed to escape, said he heard a large explosion followed by a couple of minutes of gunfire. About ten minutes later, there was a second, larger explosion, he said.
Photographs shared by residents showed a plume of smoke over the area of the blasts near the former diplomatic zone in the Wazir Akbar Khan area in central Kabul.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility. But the official Bakhtar news agency quoted witnesses saying a number of fighters from the militant Islamic State (IS) group entered the hospital and clashed with security forces.
The blasts add to a growing list of attacks and killings since the Taliban completed their victory over the previous Western-backed government in August, undermining their claim to have restored security to Afghanistan after decades of war.
Last month, an apparent bomb attack on worshippers at a Shia mosque in the Afghan city of Kunduz killed at least 55 people, in the bloodiest assault since US forces left the country.
IS, which has carried out a series of attacks on mosques and other targets since the Taliban’s seizure of Kabul in August, mounted a complex attack on the 400-bed hospital in 2017, killing more than 30 people.
