At least 24 killed, 42 wounded in Kabul bombing

Agencies
July 24, 2017

Kabul, Jul 24: At least 24 people have been killed and more than 40 wounded after a suicide car bomb targeted Afghanistan's capital Kabul, police said.

The target of Monday's attack was unclear, Najib Danish, a police spokesman, told AFP news agency, adding that the casualty toll could rise.

The attack came just before 7am and took place close to the house of Hazara leader Mohammed Mohaqeq.

Al Jazeera's Jennifer Glasse, reporting from Kabul, said the Hazara community had called a demonstration for Monday to commemorate a suicide bombing that killed 84 in the same area on July 23.

The demonstration was postponed because of security risks.

"Security has been very tight in Kabul," she said.

"This morning, new gates went up in the city to keep large vehicles from getting into the centre."

The Hazaras are one of Afghanistan's largest ethnic minorities, accounting for up to 20 percent of Afghanistan's 30 million inhabitants.

The latest suicide bombing adds to the unrelenting violence in Afghanistan, where at least 1,662 civilians were killed in the first half of the year.

It came two weeks after the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group claimed an attack on a mosque in the capital that killed at least four people.

Kabul has accounted for at least 20 percent of all civilian casualties this year, including at least 150 people killed in a massive truck bomb attack at the end of May, according to UN figures.

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