KABUL: A suicide bomber believed to be as young as 12 struck Kabul’s heavily fortified diplomatic quarter on Tuesday and killed as many as eight people and wounded many others, most of whom appeared to be workers leaving their offices at the start of the evening rush hour, witnesses and officials said.

The militant Islamic State (IS) group has claimed responsibility for the attack, which follows a spate of suicide assaults by Taliban and IS insurgents on security installations and mosques in recent weeks.

A Reuters television team counted eight people who appeared to have been killed, besides several wounded at the scene, which was shrouded in smoke from the explosion. All the casualties appeared to be Afghan civilians.

A public health official said three dead and 15 wounded had been taken to city hospitals but a security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said at least seven people had been killed and 21 wounded.

“The scene of the attack was covered in smoke and dust but I saw seven or eight vehicles loaded with dead and injured people coming out of the area,” said Ali Nazari, the manager of a nearby travel agency.

It was the first attack targeting the Afghan capital’s “Green Zone” since a massive truck bomb ripped through the area on May 31, killing or wounding hundreds, and prompting authorities to strengthen protection.

“The suicide attack was carried out by an underage bomber, a boy we think 13 or 15 years old, killing at least four and wounding over a dozen more civilians,” interior ministry spokesman Najib Danish told AFP.

IS claims responsibility for the attack

He added that the casualty toll could change. A police spokesman said the att­acker may have been as young as 12. Defence ministry spokesman Dawlat Waziri said the attacker “made it through the first checkpoint but was stopped at the second checkpoint and detonated.”

“We don’t know the target but it happened a few metres from the defence ministry’s foreign relations office. There were no casualties to our personnel,” Waziri said.

‘Horrible scene’

“I was 100 metres away when the explosion happened and as I ran towards the site I saw several people lying in blood — one had been hit in the head and was moving. It was a horrible scene,” an eyewitness said.

Another witness told AFP: “A lot of people were dead and injured and there was no one to carry them away.”

AFP reporters heard a loud explosion around 4pm (1130 GMT) just as workers would have been leaving their offices to go home, followed by the sirens of emergency services.

Many injured people were carried from the scene of the blast, put into ambulances and police pickup trucks and driven away.

The attack struck the heart of the city’s diplomatic area, where many embassies and the head offices of major international organisations, including Nato’s Resolute Support mission are located. The last major assault in Kabul was on Oct 21 when a suicide attacker hit a busload of Afghan army trainees, killing 15.

On Oct 20 a suicide bomber pretending to be a worshipper blew himself up inside a Shia mosque during evening prayers, killing 56 and wounding 55.

Over the weekend Taliban insurgents, some wearing night-vision goggles, killed 22 Afghan policemen in separate attacks on checkpoints.

Security in Kabul has been ramped up since the May 31 truck bomb that went off on the edge of the Green Zone near the German embassy, killing 150 people and wounding 400 others. Special truck scanners, barriers and permanent and mobile checkpoints have been rolled out across the city.

Published in Dawn, November 1st, 2017