ISIS claims responsibility for deadly blast at wedding in Afghanistan, killing 63 people </s> TEHRAN, Aug. 19 (MNA) – A bomb attack by ISIL targeting a wedding in the Afghan capital of Kabul left at least 63 people dead and more than 180 others injured on Saturday. </s> The Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility on Sunday for a suicide blast at a wedding reception in Afghanistan that killed 63 people, underling the dangers the country faces even if the Taliban agree a pact with the United States. </s> The death toll from a suicide bomb attack at a wedding hall in Afghanistan's capital Kabul has risen to 80.

The death toll stood at 63 on Sunday, a day after the blast, which jumped to 80 by Wednesday. Interior Ministry spokesman Nusrat Rahimi said 17 civilians died from their wounds in recent days.

He added that 30 people were in critical condition after the attack.

"Seventeen others have succumbed to their injuries in hospital and over 160 are still being treated either in hospitals or at home," Rahimi said.

The blast was so powerful that it blew much of the roof off the huge wedding hall, where hundreds of guests had gathered.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) group claimed responsibility for the attack.

It was Kabul's deadliest attack since January 2018 when the Taliban packed an ambulance with explosives and detonated it in a crowded street - killing 103 people, according to an official toll.

Many Afghanistan independence day celebrations that were scheduled to take place on August 19 were suspended in the aftermath of the horrific attack.

Security failure

So far, security officials have yet to provide any explanation as to why the wedding was targeted.

Mansoor, a 28-year-old Afghan who had 12 relatives attending the wedding, said he was told by some survivors that the attacker arrived on a bicycle.

He said he believed the target of the attack was not the wedding party.

"If you pay attention, there is a police headquarters on this road. There are at least two checkpoints he would have passed. Everyone said he appeared to be heading further along the road, but somehow he turned back," he said.

Though Afghan wedding events have been targeted in the past, the attacks have mostly taken place in remote areas and usually attended by high-profile officials or strongmen targeted by rival forces or armed groups such as the Taliban or ISIL.

US forces have also been accused of attacking several wedding parties across the country during their military air campaigns.

Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani strongly condemned the attack, vowing to "take revenge for every civilian drop of blood".

"Our struggle will continue against [ISIL], we will take revenge and will root them out," he said on Monday.

He urged the international community to join those efforts.

With additional reporting by Ali M Latifi in Kabul </s> KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Islamic State group’s affiliate in Afghanistan claims responsibility for Kabul wedding blast that killed at least 63.

Copyright © 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed. </s> By The Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Islamic State group’s affiliate in Afghanistan claims responsibility for Kabul wedding blast that killed at least 63.

Copyright © 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area. </s> A suicide-bomb blast ripped through a wedding party on a busy Saturday night in Afghanistan’s capital, killing 63 people and wounding 182 others, a government official said. More than 1,000 people had been invited, one witness said.

ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack. The Taliban earlier denied responsibility for the blast at a west Kabul wedding hall.

“Among the wounded are women and children,” Interior Ministry spokesman Nusrat Rahimi said.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said on Sunday the Taliban could not escape blame for a “barbaric” suicide bomb attack on a wedding hall in the capital, Kabul, that killed 63 people.



“The Taliban cannot absolve themselves of blame for they provide platform for terrorists,” Ghani said in a post on Twitter.

Rahimi told The Associated Press the attacker set off explosives among the wedding participants. Both the Taliban and a local affiliate of the ISIS often carry out bloody attacks in the capital.

“Around 1,200 guests were invited to the wedding,” said Ahmad Omid, a survivor who said the gathering was for his father’s cousin. “I was with the groom in the other room when we heard the blast and then I couldn't find anyone. Everyone was lying all around the hall.”

Outside a local hospital, families wailed. “There are so many dead and wounded victims,” Omid said.

Interior Ministry spokesman Nusrat Rahimi told The Associated Press there was no immediate information on the cause of the blast. Both the Taliban and a local affiliate of ISIS carry out bloody attacks in the capital.

The blast at the Dubai City wedding hall in western Kabul shattered a period of relative calm in the city.

On August 7, a Taliban car bomb aimed at Afghan security forces detonated on the same road in a busy west Kabul neighborhood, killing 14 people and wounding 145 - most of them women, children and other civilians.

Kabul’s huge, brightly lit wedding halls are a center of community life in a city weary of decades of war, with thousands of dollars spent on a single evening.

The halls also serve as meeting places, and in November at least 55 people were killed after a suicide bomber sneaked into a Kabul wedding hall where hundreds of Muslim religious scholars and clerics had gathered to mark the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad.

“Devastated by the news of a suicide attack inside a wedding hall in Kabul. A heinous crime against our people; how is it possible to train a human and ask him to go and blow himself (up) inside a wedding?!!” Sediq Seddiqi, spokesman for President Ashraf Ghani, said in a Twitter post.

Last Update: Sunday, 18 August 2019 KSA 13:18 - GMT 10:18 </s> The Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility on Sunday for a suicide blast at a wedding reception in Afghanistan that killed 63 people, underlining the dangers the country faces even if the Taliban agrees to a pact with the United States.

The Saturday night attack came as the Taliban and the United States try to negotiate an agreement on the withdrawal of U.S. forces in exchange for a Taliban commitment on security and peace talks with Afghanistan's U.S.-backed government.

Islamic State fighters, who first appeared in Afghanistan in 2014 and have since made inroads in the east and north, are not involved in the talks. They are battling government and U.S.-led international forces and the Taliban.

The U.S. special envoy for reconciliation in Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, said the attack showed the need to accelerate efforts to reach a deal with the Taliban, to help defeat Islamic State.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday called the attack"horrible" and expressed optimism at the state of talks. He said the United States would seek to get troop levels below 13,000 but leave "very significant" intelligence capabilities behind.

"We’re there for one reason, we don’t want that to be a laboratory, it can’t be a laboratory for terror," Trump said, speaking before boarding Air Force One in New Jersey.

About 14,000 U.S. troops remain in Afghanistan, training and advising Afghan security forces and conducting counterinsurgency operations.

Islamic State has claimed some of the bloodiest attacks in Afghan cities over the past couple of years, with some aimed at the Shi'ite minority.

The Sunni Muslim group, in a statement on the messaging website Telegram, claimed responsibility for the attack at a west Kabul wedding hall in a minority Shi'ite neighbourhood, saying its bomber had been able to infiltrate the reception and detonate his explosives in the crowd of "infidels".

The Taliban earlier denied responsibility for the blast and condemned it.

More than 180 people were wounded, with many women and children among the casualties, interior ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi said on Sunday as grieving families thronged to Kabul's crowded cemeteries.

"We want peace, not such brutal suicide attacks," said Ahmad Khan, who was burying a relative.

Pictures on social media from the scene of the blast showed bodies strewn amid overturned tables and chairs, with dark blood stains on the wedding hall carpet.

Both the bride and groom survived.

"I won't ever be able to forget this, however much I try," the groom, Mirwais Elmi, told the TOLOnews channel.

He said his cousin and some friends had been killed.

The bride’s father told TOLOnews that 14 members of his family were killed.

Brightly lit wedding halls that line some suburban streets of the city had been targeted previously by bombers. At least 40 people were killed in a blast in November.

There has been no let-up in fighting and bomb attacks in Afghanistan over recent months despite talks between the United States and the Taliban since late last year.

President Ashraf Ghani, in comments on the Kabul blast before the Islamic State claim, said the Taliban could not"absolve themselves of blame for they provide a platform for terrorists".

Celebrations for Monday's 100th anniversary of Afghanistan's independence from Britain were curtailed out of respect for the blast victims, the president's office said.

The Taliban has been fighting to expel foreign forces and re-establish a theocratic Islamic state since its ousting in October 2001, weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

Both U.S. negotiators and the Taliban have reported progress after eight rounds of talks since late last year.

Trump has made no secret of his desire for a U.S. pullout from Afghanistan and an end to America's longest war.

But there are concerns among Afghan officials and U.S. national security aides that Afghanistan could be plunged into a new civil war that could herald a return of Taliban rule and international militants, including Islamic State, finding a refuge.

Afghan government officials also fear that a Taliban pact could drive some die-hard Taliban fighters into the arms of Islamic State.

Under the expected deal, the Taliban, in exchange for a U.S. commitment to withdraw, would guarantee that Afghanistan would not be a sanctuary for militants to expand and plot new attacks.

The United States also wants a Taliban commitment to hold power-sharing talks with the government and announce a ceasefire. The Taliban has refused to talk to the government.

Khalilzad said the peace process had to be accelerated, in particular the intra-Afghan talks.

"Success here will put Afghans in a much stronger position to defeat ISIS," he tweeted, referring to Islamic State. </s> As families and friends mourn the loss of those killed in an attack on a military hospital in Kabul, Afghan officials launched an investigation on those responsible for the assault.

Gunmen dressed in white lab coats stormed the Sardar Daud Khan hospital in the centre of the capital on Wednesday, firing shots, detonating explosives and then battling security forces for hours. The assault resulted in the death of more than 40 people.

The Afghan interior ministry and the defence ministry on Thursday announced a probe into a claim by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) armed group that it was behind the attack.

“We are assessing Daesh claims to yesterday’s attack, but at this stage we can’t make a prejudgment prior to conclusion of investigation,” Sediq Sediqqi, the spokesperson of the Afghan ministry of interior said in a tweet, using an Arabic acronym for ISIL, also known as ISIS.

“Brutal terrorist groups like ISIS (ISIL), Taliban, Haqqani and many other regional terrorist networks with safe havens in Pakistan have been behind many horrific attacks in the past,” he added.

The Afghan Taliban, which attacked the Sardar Daud Khan hospital in 2013 killing six people, denied responsibility for Wednesday’s assault.

According to US military officials, ISIL has about 700 fighters in Afghanistan. The group has previously claimed responsibility for a number of attacks that resulted in a large number of casualties, including a twin suicide bombing at a protest march in Kabul last year that left at least 80 people dead.

As reports emerged of ISIL’s claim of responsibility, some analysts said the group does not have the capacity to conduct an attack of this magnitude.

“[ISIL] is still trying to gain a foothold in the east of the country,” Inayatullah Kakar, an Afghan security and political analyst, told a foreign news publication.

“ISIL does exist in Afghanistan, but for them to conduct an attack like this in an area that is heavily guarded and with this calibre that killed so many people, it doesn’t seem possible, as they are still trying to gain territories in eastern Afghanistan, while fighting the Taliban.”

The UN Security Council also denounced the attack in a statement released on Thursday and urged the international community to cooperate with the Afghan government to bring those responsible to justice and to suppress the financing of “terrorism”.

The death toll has risen to 49 with dozens wounded, a senior health official said on Thursday.

Salim Rassouli, director of Kabul hospitals, said 49 people had been killed in the attack on the Sardar Mohammad Khan military hospital on Wednesday, with at least 63 wounded.

Some uncertainty remained over the exact figure and one security official said more than 90 people had been wounded. Earlier estimates had put the number of dead at more than 30 with 50 wounded.

Gunmen went through the 400-bed hospital, shooting doctors, patients and visitors and battling security forces for several hours in a sophisticated operation claimed by Islamic State.
ISIL claims responsibility for a terrorist attack against a wedding party in Afghanistan the day prior, which left 63 people dead and over 200 injured.