A suicide bombing attack reported to be targeting a military academy in Kabul Afghanistan on Tuesday, killed two civilians and four military personnel and injuring twelve, the Interior Ministry said.
The latest suicide bombing incident in Kabul comes when talks between the United States and the rebel Taliban have reached a critical stage. But no group has claimed responsibility to the latest attack that is coming after some months of relative peace from constant attacks targeting Afghan forces by Taliban and militants from the Islamic State.
Afghan security forces in Kabul have cordoned off the area, and ambulances rushed in and out to evacuate casualties.
According to the statement by the Interior Ministry, suicide bombing happened at a police checkpoint near the entrance to the Marshal Fahim Military Academy, located on the outskirt’s of a western Kabul neighbourhood. Local TV channels showed images of Afghan security forces blocking off the main road leading to the blast site from far away.
The academy has been attacked in the past. Last May, a suicide bomber killed six people there. The school is sometimes called “Sandhurst in the Sand,” in reference to the famous British school. It’s named for Mohammed Fahim, the country’s late vice president and a military commander of the Northern Alliance that fought the Taliban. It was inaugurated in 2013 and British troops in Afghanistan oversaw the establishment of the academy’s officer school and training program.
The academy was also the site where U.S. Army Maj Gen. Harold J. Greene lost his life the highest-ranking U.S. military officer to be killed in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Greene, then deputy commander of NATO’s transition force in the country, was shot and killed by an Afghan soldier in a so-called “insider attack” that was later claimed by the Taliban in August 2014.
The Taliban today control or hold sway over nearly half of Afghanistan and are at their highest since the 2001 U.S. invasion that ousted the Taliban who harboured the late al-Qaida terror network leader Osama bin Laden.
The last large scale attack in Kabul happened in November when a car bomb killed 13 and wounded 20. The suicide bombing appeared to target a private security firm, but many of the dead were children. No group claimed responsibility.