A suicide bomber blew up his sport utility vehicle outside a small clinic in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday, bringing the building down on those inside, Afghan authorities said. At least 35 people were reported killed.
Would-be rescuers were frantically digging through the rubble in search of survivors trapped in the collapsed 10-bed clinic, said Mohammed Zaref Nayebkhail, the provincial health director.
The Taliban, authors of many bombings in this war-ravaged land, denied responsibility for this one. Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the movement, told AP in a phone interview that “this attack was not done by our fighters”. Health director Nayebkhail said guards had tried to prevent the attacker from driving his SUV into the medical compound, in the mountainous Azra district of Logar province, 40 km east of Kabul.
“The driver didn’t stop and he entered the compound and reached the main building of the health centre, where the truck detonated,” he said. Mr Nayebkhail said at least 35 people were killed and at least 53 were wounded in the blast.
He said an Afghan Army helicopter was dispatched to the area to deliver medical supplies and to ferry survivors to other hospitals. He said the clinic had recently been expanded to meet the health needs of the far-flung district’s population.
Late Friday, another blast — this one caused by a bicycle rigged with explosives — had ripped through a bazar in the Khanabad district of Kunduz province in northern Afghanistan, killing at least 10 people, including a police officer. At least 24 people were wounded in the attack, according to an interior ministry statement. The bombings were the latest episodes in a recent escalation of violence in Afghanistan. —AP