KABUL, July 23, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – The death toll from a suicide attack near
Kabul international airport has risen to 23, the health ministry said Monday,
with an AFP driver among the dead.
At least 107 others were wounded in Sunday’s powerful explosion, which
happened as scores of people were leaving the airport after welcoming home
Afghan Vice President Abdul Rashid Dostum from exile.
The health ministry warned the latest toll, which initially had been 14
dead and 60 wounded, could change.
AFP driver Mohammad Akhtar, 31, was among those killed when the suicide
bomber blew himself up.
The father of four had been on his way to work the night shift.
The attack was claimed by the Islamic State group through its official
Amaq news agency, according to the SITE intelligence monitoring group.
Senior Afghan government officials, political leaders and supporters had
gone to the airport to greet Dostum, a powerful ethnic Uzbek leader and
former warlord.
Despite being linked to a catalogue of human rights abuses in Afghanistan,
Dostum was mobbed like a celebrity as he arrived in Afghanistan after more
than a year in exile.
He was travelling in an armoured vehicle and narrowly escaped the attack.
Dostum fled to Turkey in May 2017 after being accused of organising the
rape and torture of a political rival.
He had denied the allegations and said his departure was for medical
check-ups and family reasons.
Seven of Dostum’s bodyguards have been convicted of the sexual assault and
illegal imprisonment of Ahmad Ishchi, a former governor of the northern
province of Jowzjan, in 2016.