Suicide bomber kills six outside Kabul military academy

KABUL: At least six people were killed and more than a dozen injured after a suicide attack outside a military academy in the Afghan capital on Tuesday, officials said.
The attack happened during the morning rush hour as a bus carrying university cadets entered the Marshal Fahim Academy compound along a road in the western part of Kabul.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but officials said that the academy’s cadets were the target.
Interior Ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi said a car packed with explosives was defused by security forces and blamed the Taliban for the blast.
“According to preliminary information, this attack was conducted by the terrorist Taliban,” he said.
President Ashraf Ghani condemned the bloodshed, saying the country wanted “an end to violence, an end to war, a ceasefire and an enduring peace.”
There were conflicting reports on the number of casualties, with the Interior Ministry saying four officers and two civilians had lost their lives. It added that more than a dozen were wounded.
“The sound of the explosion was very powerful,” Wali Dad, a resident who lives near the scene of the attack, told Arab News. “It broke the glass of some shops and houses nearby.”
The strike comes as US diplomats and Taliban delegates resumed peace talks in Doha to end a decades-old war plaguing the nation.
President Donald Trump had called off the talks with the Taliban last September following the death of a US soldier in an attack which he blamed on the Taliban.
However, during his first visit to Afghanistan in November, he ordered the relaunch of talks with the insurgents.
Both sides have been holding meetings since, with hopes high that a peace deal could be soon be signed.
US diplomats have been pushing the Taliban to either announce a truce or cut down on violence prior to the signing of the deal, despite the US stepping up its attacks against the Taliban. Neither party has committed to a reduction in violence.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former anti-US insurgent leader who now lives in Kabul, said in a press conference on Tuesday that the two sides were finalizing the signing of a deal “in the near future,” and that the US would shoulder more of the responsibility for it not happening.
The previous suicide attack in Kabul took place last November, when a vehicle belonging to a private firm was targeted. Many of the 13 killed were Afghan civilians.