19 dead, 50 wounded in Kabul hospital attack: official

19 dead, 50 wounded in Kabul hospital attack: official 

“I am inside the hospital. I heard a big explosion coming from the first checkpoint,” according to a witness.

KABUL: At least 19 people were killed and 50 were injured when a Kabul hospital was attacked on Tuesday, a health ministry official said, after the Taliban confirmed two blasts and a witness reported gunfire.

“Nineteen dead bodies and about 50 wounded people have been taken to hospitals in Kabul,” the official, who asked not to be named, told AFP.

The explosions were the latest in a string of attack in the weeks since the Taliban seized power in August.

Taliban’s struggle to bring stability to Afghanistan has been dogged by a series of bloody assaults by Daesh’s local chapter.

Tuesday’s attack has not yet been claimed by any group.

“I am inside the hospital. I heard a big explosion coming from  the first checkpoint. We were told to go to safe rooms. I also hear guns firing,” a doctor at the Sardar Muhammad Daud Khan Khan hospital in Kabul told AFP.

“I can still hear gun firing  inside the hospital building. I think the attackers are going from room to room… like the first time it was attacked,” the doctor added.

Ambulances Speeding through Kabul

The hospital, which treats wounded soldiers from both the Taliban and former Afghan security forces, was previously attacked in 2017, when gunmen disguised as medical personal killed at least 30 people in an hours-long siege.

Daesh have claimed four mass casualty attacks since the Taliban takeover on August, including suicide bomb blasts targeting Shiite Muslim mosques. The group regards Shiite Muslims as heretics.

In the 2017 attack on the military hospital, militants went room to room killing people. Switching to knives when they ran out of ammunition.

That attack was claimed by the Deash group, and the Taliban denied responsibility.

However, survivors told AFP that the attackers chanted “ Long live Taliban” in Pashto and attacked all but two wards on the hospital’s first floor where Taliban patients were admitted.

Black Smoke

An Italian NGO which runs a separate hospital in the capital tweeted on Tuesday that it has received nine patients with injuries from the blast site.

Picture shared on social media showed black smoke billowing into the air after the explotion, the first of which went off at round 1:00 pm (0830 GMT).

AFP journalists saw Taliban fighters racing to the scene in at two armoured personnel carriers (APCs) and pick-up trucks.

Roads close to the heavily fortified “Green Zone” where the buildings of several former Western embassies were located were closed off to traffic and Taliban guards scaled up searches.