Bombing kills at least 10 in east Afghanistan
A bomber riding a motorcycle has detonated his explosives near a governor’s house in Kunar Province in eastern Afghanistan, killing at least 10 people.
Officials said more than 40 others were also injured in the bombing, which occurred in a market in the Asadabad provincial capital early Saturday morning.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but Taliban militants, who have been waging a 14 year-long bloody militancy in the country, have been blamed for such attacks in the past.
Kunar is a restive and remote province that shares a long border with neighboring Pakistan, which the Afghan government has accused in the past of harboring Taliban militants.
A witness to the blast, who did not want to be named, said that an influential tribal elder, Haji Khan Jan, was the target of the attack and was killed. Jan had led a local uprising against the Taliban in the past, according to the witness, who spoke anonymously.
The Afghan government is due to hold peace talks with the Taliban next week. Delegates from Afghanistan, China, the US and Pakistan met in Kabul last week for a fourth round of talks aimed at forming a path back to the nascent peace process, which was interrupted by last summer’s announcement that Taliban leader Mullah Omar had died.
In a separate development, a drone strike by US-led forces in Afghanistan killed at least three people in the country’s eastern Paktika Province.
According to Afghan officials, the airstrike was carried out in Dadul Village on Friday. They said the three killed were militants affiliated to al-Qaeda.
Paktika is relatively volatile province, where Taliban militants have a not-so-strong presence.
The United States regularly uses drones for airstrikes and spying missions in Afghanistan as well as Pakistan’s northwestern tribal belt near the Afghan border.
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