published Jan 27, 2018, 4:33:01 PM, by Eltaf Najafizada
(Bloomberg) —
A Taliban suicide bomber detonated explosives in downtown Kabul on Saturday, killing at least 95 people and wounding 158 others in the worst attack since a truck bombing near the Afghan capital’s diplomatic zone last year.

President Donald Trump condemned the bombing as “despicable” and called on the world to act against the Islamic fundamentalist group.

The bomber used an explosive-laden ambulance and reached the gate of the former Interior Ministry building, Nasrat Rahimi, a deputy spokesman for the ministry, said by phone. Police at a checkpoint allowed the vehicle to enter a lane leading to the building after the bomber said he was carrying sick people to a hospital.

The casualty figures were confirmed by Mohammad Ismail Kawoosi, a Health Ministry spokesman. The Taliban claimed the attack, which spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed said on Twitter killed 80 police recruits.

The majority of the dead are civilians as the bomb went off in a very densely populated area, Rahimi said. The Afghan government’s chief executive, Abdullah Abdullah, decried the attack, calling it “insane, heinous, and a war crime” and saying in a tweet that “this is enough!”

Trump said the attack renews the resolve of the U.S. and its Afghan partners to fight the Taliban’s “wicked ideology.”

“The Taliban’s cruelty will not prevail,” Trump said in a statement released by the White House. “Now, all countries should take decisive action against the Taliban and the terrorist infrastructure that supports them.”

Afghanistan’s government is struggling to contain a resurgent Taliban, which controls or contests more than 40 percent of the country. The increased violence in Kabul will be a blow to Trump’s plans to end the 17-year conflict after he boosted forces in the country last year amid signs that Afghan forces were losing ground.

The latest bombing in Kabul comes a week after Islamic State carried out an attack on the Intercontinental Hotel in Afghanistan’s capital, which killed 22 people, including 14 foreigners.

It’s the deadliest incident in the city since May 31, when more than 90 people were killed and about 450 others wounded by a blast detonated near the diplomatic zone. Nobody claimed responsibility for that attack, but Afghanistan’s security agencies blamed Pakistan’s main intelligence agency and the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani network.

–With assistance from Chris Kay, Ravil Shirodkar and Nafeesa Syeed.To contact the reporter on this story: Eltaf Najafizada in Kabul at enajafizada1@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ruth Pollard at rpollard2@bloomberg.net Ros Krasny, Kenneth Pringle
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