KABUL (Dispatches) – The Taliban on Wednesday took responsibility for last evening’s deadly car bombing aimed at the Afghan Defense Minister Bismillah Mohammadi in the capital Kabul.
The late evening attack on Tuesday left eight people killed and at least 20 more injured, according to the Interior Ministry.
The advancing Taliban militants took to Twitter in the morning to claim credit for the attack in the heart of capital Kabul.
The attack was carried out by several Taliban militants, armed with light and heavy weapons, as well as using a car bomb, it said, claiming an important meeting was going on at the office of the defense minister during the attack.
“According to reports, the ‘enemy’ suffered heavy casualties in the attack,” tweeted the Taliban. They further warned the attack was the beginning of retaliatory operations against key figures and leaders of the “Kabul administration” (the Afghan government).
“The Taliban will no longer remain indifferent to the ‘crimes of the occupier and the domestic enemy’ and will stand against it with all its might,” warned the militants.
On Wednesday, another explosion occurred near a facility of Afghanistan’s main security agency in the capital. The blast wounded two civilians and a security official, police said.
There was no claim of responsibility for the latest attack, but it came as the Taliban have stepped up their offensive against the government, which they say came to power as “the result of military occupation.”
Violence has been surging across Afghanistan. The 2001 invasion of Afghanistan by the U.S. ousted the Taliban from power, but it worsened the security situation in the country.
The Taliban are now demanding a “the lion’s share of power” in any new government in Afghanistan, according the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, who warned on Tuesday that Afghanistan’s situation was rapidly deteriorating.
Meanwhile, an emergency has been declared in the strategic city of Lashkar Gah — the capital of southern Helmand Province — as Afghan military forces are dispatched to the city to repel a Taliban offensive.