HERAT: A powerful car bomb near a police station on Friday night killed eight people and wounded more than 50 others in Afghanistan’s western Herat province, officials said on Saturday.

Herat Governor Sayed Abdul Wahid Qatali said several women and children were among the dead.

He added that at least 53 people, including civilians and security for­ces, were injured when a van packed with explosives went off in a crowded part of the city in the evening.

Dozens of homes and shops were also damaged in the blast, and rescuers rushed to the scene to help several people trapped under the rubble, Qatali said.

According to Mohammad Rafiq Sherzai, a senior health official, eight bodies, including two women, three children, two male civilians, and one member of the military, had been taken to hospitals.

Forty-seven others, including 20 women, 11 men, eight children and eight security forces members have been wounded, Sherzai said, adding that 10 injured were in critical condition.

President Ghani blames Taliban for the attack

No one claimed responsibility for the bombing but local officials blamed Taliban insurgents.

Representatives of the Taliban, who have been fighting a foreign-backed Afghan government since they were ousted from power by US-led forces in late 2001, were not immediately available to comment.

Peace negotiations between the Afghan government and insurgent Taliban in Qatar’s capital Doha have struggled to make progress amid international calls to reduce violence.

The UN Security Council in a statement condemned “in the strongest terms the alarming number of attacks deliberately targeting civilians in Afghanistan”. “The members of Security Council called for an immediate end to those targeted attacks and stressed the urgent and imperative need to bring the perpetrators to justice,” it said.

President Ashraf Ghani condemned the attack and blamed the Taliban. In a statement, he said the group “continued their illegitimate war and violence against our people” and “showed once again they have no intention for peaceful settlement of the current crises”.

There were 8,820 civilian casualties in 2020, according to a report released by UN mission in Afghanistan last month.

Russia plans to hold a conference on Afghanistan in Moscow on March 18 and has invited several regional players, including the Afghan government and politicians, to jumpstart the peace process as diplomacy by foreign powers including Washington ramps up.

It comes at a crunch time for the peace process as a May 1 deadline for foreign troops to withdraw from Afghanistan looms and the United States reviews its plans.

Published in Dawn, March 14th, 2021