At least 25 people including eight journalists were killed in a fresh wave of suicide attacks in Kabul on Monday. The journalists died when a bomber disguised as a TV cameraman detonated a second bomb at the site of an earlier explosion. According to Afghan officials 45 people were wounded as a result of twin suicide blasts. The Afghan Journalists Safety Committee said seven journalists had been killed and French news agency Agence France-Presse confirmed that its chief photographer in Afghanistan, Shah Marai, was among the dead. Najib Danish, spokesman for the interior ministry, said the suicide bomber appeared to have posed as a journalist and blew him-self up where reporters and emergency health officials were standing. The Afghan affiliate of the militant group, known as Khorasan Province, posted an urgent statement on an ISIS-affiliate website saying two of its martyrdom seekers carried out the double bombing targeting the headquarters of the “renegade” Afghan intelligence services in Kabul. It said the first martyrdom seeker detonated his explosive vest, forcing members of the intelligence service to head to the area of the explosion. The statement said the second martyrdom seeker detonated his explosive vest after that. According to the reports the first blast happened at around at 8 a.m. local time in the Shashdarak area of the city, where the US embassy and Afghan government buildings are located, prompting journalists to rush to the scene. The second explosion came as the attacker, posing as a cameraman, detonated explosives as journalists huddled around the scene, Kabul City Police spokesman Hashmat Stanikzai told the Agency.
Shortly after the twin bombings, at least 11 students were killed and 16 others, including five Romanian soldiers, were injured in a car bombing in the southern Kandahar province of the country. According to local officials, the explosion occurred at around 11am in Haji Abdullah Khan village of Daman district when a suicide bomber detonated a vehicle full of explosives.
The horrific spike in violence in Afghanistan is a matter of serious concern as innocent people are getting killed day in and day out due to this mindless violence that has been going on unabated in the region over the past several years. Needless to say hundreds of civilians have been killed and wounded in fresh spate of violence in the country. Despite the US and Afghan forces’ tall claims the insurgent groups are still calling shots on the ground.
It is quite unfortunate that rather than going for a holistic review of its policies towards the region the US is following the same age old tactic of using force to tackle the situation in the war-torn country. The use of excessive force by allied forces in Afghanistan, in return, had further complicated this conflict besides diminishing the prospects of peaceful solution of the Afghan Conundrum. The dream of peace and normalcy in Afghanistan will remain elusive unless and until the key stakeholders in the region get engaged in a structured and sustained dialogue process. The bloody wars being waged and fought in different conflict hit countries such as Iraq, Syria and Yemen, Nigeria, Kashmir and Afghanistan amply demonstrate the fact that wars do not bring peace but death and destruction. The only thing that can bring peace is the end of war. And this is perhaps the only lesson that the stakeholders should to learn from the history of bloody wars.