JALALABAD: At least 18 persons including 10 policemen were killed and 14 other policemen injured in a multiple Taliban suicide attack on a police station in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad on Thursday, officials said.
“Ten policemen, including the district police chief, were killed and 14 police were wounded,” deputy interior minister Muhammad Ayoub Salangi told a foreign news agency.
“One civilian was also killed, and all seven attackers,” Salangi said.
No group or person immediately claimed responsibility for the attack which occurred two weeks before the Afghanistan’s presidential election.
However, Taliban militants have vowed a campaign of violence to disrupt the vote on April 5 to choose a successor to President Hamid Karzai.
On March 5, the Afghan Taliban said that they have ordered their fighters to attack anyone helping organizing the April 5 presidential election in the war-torn country.
“We have given orders to all our mujahideen to use all force at their disposal to disrupt these upcoming sham elections – to target all workers, activists, callers, security apparatus and offices,” the Taliban said in a statement.
“It is the religious obligation of every Afghan to fulfill their duty by foiling the latest plot of the invaders that is guised in the garb of elections,” the statement said.
