KABUL (Dispatches) – At least nine people, including three assailants, were killed and 22 others wounded in three separate bombings in Afghanistan on Saturday, authorities said.
In one attack, one intelligence agency officer was killed and 16 civilians injured after a terrorist detonated a truck bombing in front of a provincial intelligence office in Lashkar Gah city, capital of southern Helmand province.
Those among the injured were 13 children and two women in the blast which occurred around 09:00 am local time and also damaged several nearby buildings.
The deadly explosion followed a blast in national capital of Kabul during which one civilian and two security forces died and five people injured.
The bombing came when a man wearing a suit tried to enter the Green Zone but detonated his explosive jacket after being identified by security forces in a security checkpoint in Shash Darak, a diplomatic district in central Kabul, an Interior Ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi told local Tolo News TV.
Separately, the Taliban attacked a security checkpoint in the western Afghanistan province of Farah, killing at least 18 troops and wounding two more.
Dawlat Waziri, a spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry, announced the news, saying the attack had targeted the province’s Bala Buluk District.
Afghanistan has seen rampant instability since the 2001 invasion of the country by a United States-led NATO coalition, which ousted a Taliban regime at the time. The Taliban then launched a militancy, targeting foreign and Afghan forces as well as civilians.
In late January, a study by the BBC showed that the Taliban were now present and active in 70 percent of Afghan territory.
The Daesh terrorist group is a more recent phenomenon in Afghanistan, but it has managed to establish a foothold in the already-conflict-ridden country.
Recently, U.S. President Donald Trump authorized a troop surge in Afghanistan, a policy that had been tried out by former U.S. president George W. Bush but had failed to end the Taliban militancy.