KABUL: A Taliban suicide bomber blew up a truck laden with explosives near government buildings in Afghanistan’s southeastern town of Gardez in Paktia province on Thursday, killing at least five people and wounding 30 in what was the insurgent group’s first attack targeting an urban area since the signing of a historic peace deal with the US.
The US-Taliban agreement in late February on withdrawing foreign forces from Afghanistan was signed to bring peace to the war-torn country, and in accordance with it the Taliban committed to stop targeting urban settlements.
A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahid, said in a state- ment that the attack in Gardez was carried out against a main army base in response to a military offensive ordered by President Ashraf Ghani.
While Afghan officials said the casualties were civilians, Mujahid claimed the attack targeted security forces.
The assault came after Ghani ordered government troops to switch from a defensive to an offensive mode, in order to begin large-scale operations against the insurgents following two deadly assaults in Kabul and in the eastern province of Nangarhar on Tuesday.
In Kabul, gunmen attacked a maternity hospital, killing 24 people, including new mothers and newborn babies. A suicide attack, claimed by the terrorist group Daesh, at a funeral in eastern Nangahar on the same day killed 32.
The Taliban condemned both attacks.
In response to the Gardez strike, National Security Council spokesman Javid Faisal said the Taliban’s “campaign of killing civil- ians” was aimed at instilling fear and “only takes us all further away from peace.”
He said in a Twitter post that the attack “shows that the US-Taliban agreement had no impact on the reduction of violence.”
Thursday’s attack has also fueled concerns that the peace deal had failed to de-escalate violence as the Afghan government was not a party to it. On the basis of the accord, the Taliban had to halt attacks on US-led troops, but not on Afghan forces.
“There have been accusations and counter accusations from all sides since the faulty deal was signed. People are not optimistic now and the Gardez attack by the Taliban clearly shows their violation of the deal they had signed with America,” Gul Pacha Majidi, a former lawmaker, told Arab News. “There have been several heinous attacks and there is no doubt they will have their effects on the peace process, regardless of who has done it,” he said.
