Suicide bombers target media, foreign offices in Afghanistan

[Nergal]

 

JOURNALISTS are being targeted by insurgents in embattled Afghanistan, with co-ordinated suicide bomber strikes in the capital yesterday, the latest attack on news messengers.

Yesterday’s co-ordinated attacks, which started with a motorbike suicide bomber detonating in central Kabul, killed 25 people and wounded 45.

The attack was carried out close to the offices of internal spy group the National Directorate of Security (NDS) and other foreign offices, including the US embassy in the high security central district. Five civilians are believed to have been killed.

But it was the second blast 20 minutes later that was the most deadly, when a suicide bomber reportedly posing as a cameraman detonated his vest after media and emergency crews arrived.

French news agency Agence France Presse confirmed one of their photographers Shah Mirai was killed in the blast.

Local Tolo news agency reporter at the scene Gulabuddin Ghubar said other reporters were injured, including one from Reuters.

“The second blast happened while journalists and cameramen were busy covering the area,” Ghubar said.

Last week an Afghan journalist working for Kabul News TV in the southern city of Kandahar was gunned down as he drove to work.

The attack came the same day as a meeting in Kabul to discuss how to safeguard journalists who were considered secondary targets by the Taliban to their primary objective of killing Coalition forces and local police and army.

Last year was the bloodiest for journalists in Afghanistan, according to the Afghan Journalists’ Safety Committee, with at least 20 killed and 169 cases of violence or threats.

No one has taken responsibility for the latest blasts.

A large explosion at a voter registration centre last week killed 69 people, mostly mothers with their children lining up to register to vote for October parliamentary elections.