ISIS claims responsibility for Kabul wedding bombing that killed 63
ISIS says it was behind the weekend suicide bombing of an Afghan wedding that left 63 dead — including women and children — and nearly 200 others wounded.
The terrorist group said a Pakistani ISIS member had carried out the late Saturday attack by detonating a car bomb outside the gathering in a Shiite neighborhood in the western part of Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul.
ISIS has been behind previous attacks on Shiites, who they consider a religious and political enemy.
Ahmad Omid, who survived the blast at a wedding hall known as Dubai City, said about 1,200 guests had been invited for his father’s cousin’s wedding.
“I was with the groom in the other room when we heard the blast, and then I couldn’t find anyone,” he said. “Everyone was lying all around the hall.”
The bomb detonated near the stage of the celebration, where musicians were playing, and “all the youths, children and all the people who were there were killed,” said Gul Mohammad, and eyewitness to the blast.
The deadly explosion followed an earlier bombing in Kabul on Aug. 7, when 14 people were killed and 145 wounded. The previous blast occurred on the same road as the wedding attack and had targeted government security forces.
The latest bombing was condemned by local Taliban insurgents as “forbidden and unjustifiable.”
Kabul’s huge, brightly lit wedding halls are centers of community life in a city weary of decades of war, with thousands of dollars spent on a single evening.
“Devastated by the news of a suicide attack inside a wedding hall in Kabul,” presidential spokesman Sediq Seddiqui said in a Twitter post. “A heinous crime against our people; how is it possible to train a human and ask him to go and blow himself (up) inside a wedding?!!”
Other messages of shock poured in Sunday.
“Such acts are beyond condemnation,” said the European Union mission to Afghanistan.
US Ambassador to Afghanistan John Bass called the attack “an act of extreme depravity.’’
The explosion came just days after the end of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, with Kabul residents visiting family and friends, and just ahead of Afghanistan’s 100th Independence Day on Monday.
The city, long familiar with checkpoints and razor wire, has been under heavier security ahead of the anniversary.
The blast also comes at an extremely uncertain time in Afghanistan, as the US and Taliban forces appear close to a deal on ending the war.
The Afghan government has been sidelined from those discussions, and the nation’s leaders saying their government was waiting to hear results of President Trump’s meeting Friday with his national security team about the negotiations.
Top issues include a US troop withdrawal and Taliban guarantees they would not allow Afghanistan to become a launching pad for global terror attacks.
–With AP
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