Investigators at the scene of the suicide bombing outside the Supreme Court in Kabul yesterday.
KABUL: A Taliban suicide car bomber yesterday targeted staff at Afghanistan’s Supreme Court, killing 14 civilians and wounding 38 in the second attack in two days in the fortified capital, police said.
Women and children were among those killed and injured in the powerful explosion at the entrance to the court, near the US embassy, as buses waited to take court staff home at the end of the working day.
The bomber struck at around 4pm in the crowded area, close to a block of residential homes of middle-class Afghans.
General Mohammad Zahir, head of Kabul criminal investigations, said the bomber rammed one bus carrying court staff.
“A suicide bomb hit at the back of a Coaster causing lots of civilian casualties, dead and wounded,” he said.
“We have 14 dead and 38 wounded,” he said, adding that at least two women were among the dead and children were also among casualties. “Most casualties are court employees.”
Human flesh and bodies were scattered on the ground as police picked their way through the debris, the wreckage of a car and two badly damaged buses on the main road leading to the airport.
A couple of legs and part of a body were stuck to the back of one bus. Civilian volunteers helped evacuate the wounded by foot, on shoulder, by handcarts or just dragging them out.
“We were sitting in a car when suddenly there was an explosion in the car behind me,” Kabul resident Mira Jan, bleeding from a wound in the head, said.
“After that I don’t know what happened.”
In a statement, the Taliban, who have stepped up an 11-year insurgency against the Western-backed Afghan government as Nato troops prepare to withdraw next year, claimed responsibility for the attack.
The Taliban claimed responsibility and threatened more attacks on the judiciary if it continued to sentence to death members of its militia.
In a statement, they said they had punished judges for “justifying the invading infidels” in sentencing to death Taliban prisoners held by the government.
“Today’s attack was a warning that should they (judges) continue to give tyrannical verdicts and intimidate (our) countrymen, the mujahideen will not tolerate it and condemn them to death.”
In April, Taliban militants stormed a court in the western town of Farah, killing 44 people to free insurgents standing trial.
Yesterday’s attack was the deadliest in Kabul since May 16 when a suicide car bomb struck a foreign military convoy, killing 15 people, including five Americans.
Children accounted for 21 per cent of all civilians killed and wounded. Casualties caused by makeshift bombs called IEDs, the Taliban’s weapon of choice, have risen 41 per cent.
The Taliban were brought down in Kabul in 2001 by US-led troops for sheltering Al Qaeda militants behind the 9/11 attacks.
On Monday, seven Taliban insurgents were killed after launching a gun and grenade attack on military buildings near the airport’s perimeter fence.
The response from Afghan security forces to that assault was widely praised as a sign of their growing professionalism, as they take over responsibility from 100,000 US-led foreign combat troops who will pull out by the end of next year.
On May 24, militants launched a coordinated suicide and gun assault on a compound of the International Organization for Migration in Kabul.
One policeman, two civilians and all four militants died in that attack, and Afghan security forces won credit for an effective response.
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