Deadly car bomb explodes in Kabul

KABUL — A car bomb exploded near the entrance to Kabul airport on Monday, killing at least five people and ratcheting up regional tensions, days after a series of suicide attacks in the Afghan capital killed dozens of civilians and wounded hundreds more.

The attacks, which follow a change of leadership in the Taliban, have dashed any hopes of an immediate resumption of peace talks with the government and suggest new leader Mullah Mohammad Akhtar Mansour intends to send a message that there will be no letup in the insurgency.

They have also stoked tensions with neighbouring Pakistan, the base of many leaders of the hardline Islamist Taliban movement, according to many in Afghanistan.

President Ashraf Ghani, who has made improving relations with Pakistan a priority on the grounds it may push the Taliban into peace talks, said that Islamabad had to act to cut off the bomb making factories and suicide training camps being run from its side of the border.

“We hoped for peace, but war is declared against us from Pakistani territory; this in fact puts into a display a clear hostility against a neighbouring country,” he said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for Monday’s suicide attack in a crowded area outside an airport checkpoint, saying it was targeting “foreign forces”.

A security official at the scene said the attack appeared to have been aimed at two armoured cars, although it was not clear who was in the vehicles.

Kabul police chief, Abdul Rahman Rahimi, said five people had died and 16 were wounded. A woman and a child were among the injured, public health ministry spokesman, Wahidullah Mayar, said.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the occupants of the two targeted vehicles were foreigners and had all been killed. He denied that any Afghan civilians died in the attack.

Security and safety

The heavily fortified Afghan capital was already on high alert following last week’s attacks, which killed at least 50 civilians and security forces personnel in what the United Nations said was the worst day of violence since 2009.

Pakistan denies sponsoring the Taliban, but Ghani’s calls reflect the growing pressure he faces at home to stem an insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives so far this year.

“Our relation with Pakistan is based on our national interests, on top of which comes security and safety of our people,” he said. “If our people continue to be killed, relations lose meaning and I hope it will not happen.”

But Ghani did not entirely shut the door on resuming dialogue with the Taliban if it stopped the violence.

“We will make peace only with those who believe in the meaning of being a human, Muslim and Afghan and who do not destroy their own country on order from foreign masters,” he said.

Conflict between the Western-backed government and the Taliban has intensified this year, with civilians and Afghan security forces taking the brunt after the NATO combat mission ended last year.

Last Friday, a truck bomb killed at least 15 people and wounded 248 in Kabul. That evening, suicide attacks on a police academy and a base used by US special forces killed more than 30 police and security contractors, besides an American soldier.

Ghani’s coalition government, weakened by infighting, has struggled to respond to the crisis, which has been further complicated by uncertainty around the Taliban leadership.

Mansour’s swift appointment by a small council of leaders in the Pakistani city of Quetta has caused rifts within the movement and fed speculation that the latest violence is linked to the leadership dispute.

Several senior figures in the insurgent movement, which wants to re-establish a hardline Islamist regime toppled by US-led military intervention in 2001, have sought a new council to decide the issue.