Explosion kills 3 tribal elders in east Afghanistan
A blast at a hotel in Afghanistan’s eastern city of Jalalabad has killed at least three tribal elders and injured two others, although the exact cause of the explosion remains unclear.
The blast occurred Tuesday on the second floor of a hotel in Jalalabad, the capital city of the country’s violence-ridden Nangarhar Province, where the tribal elders had checked in, said a spokesman for the provincial governor, Attaullah Khogyani.
It was not clear if the blast was caused by a bomb, and Khogyani said no one had claimed responsibility.
The elders were visiting Jalalabad to take part in a meeting on the new electronic identity cards being distributed by the central government.
Nangarhar, which borders Pakistan, has long been beset by militancy and violence. Both the Taliban and Daesh terrorist groups are present in the province.
A new study has found that the Taliban militants are openly active in 70 percent of Afghan territory, fully controlling four percent of the country and maintaining presence in another 66 percent.
Daesh has so far claimed responsibility for several terrorist attacks in Jalalabad, including a January 24 attack targeting an office of the Save the Children aid organization in the city.
Former Afghan president Hamid Karzai recently said the US was colluding with Daesh terrorists in Afghanistan and allowing the Takfiri group to flourish in the country.
Most recently, Karzai also told the US-based Washington Post in an interview published last week that the US was not in Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban but was there because America’s main rivals such as China, Russia, and Iran were in the neighborhood.
Russia, too, has pointed to indications that the US military is allowing members of Daesh, who have suffered serious defeats in Syria and Iraq, to infiltrate into Afghanistan.
On December 23, 2017, Russian presidential envoy to Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov warned that an estimated 10,000 members of the Takfiri terrorist group were present in Afghanistan, and that their number was growing.
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