{"id":24722,"date":"2016-04-19T02:28:46","date_gmt":"2016-04-19T02:28:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/suicide-car-bomber-attacks-heart-of-afghanistan-s\/"},"modified":"2016-04-19T02:28:39","modified_gmt":"2016-04-19T02:28:39","slug":"suicide-car-bomber-attacks-heart-of-afghanistan-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/suicide-car-bomber-attacks-heart-of-afghanistan-s\/","title":{"rendered":"Suicide car bomber attacks heart of Afghanistan&#8217;s Kabul"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{At least six killed and many more wounded in first major Taliban attack since the group announced it &#8220;spring offensive&#8221;.}<\/p>\n<p>At least six people were killed and many wounded when a suicide car bomber blew himself up near the defence ministry in the heart of the Afghan capital, police said. <\/p>\n<p>Al Jazeera&#8217;s Qais Azimy, reporting from Kabul, said the explosion went off in the centre of the city at a busy time, in an attack quickly claimed by the Taliban.<\/p>\n<p>Police said that 30 people were wounded and health ministry officials later gave a figure of 200.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What we know from police sources is that a suicide bomber, who was driving a vehicle with explosives, detonated himself targeting a convoy of Afghan army near the defence ministry building,&#8221; Azimy said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Witnesses are telling us the attack was followed by some gunfire. The Afghan police believe there could be a number of attackers in one of the buildings nearby.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>A Kabul police spokesman, Basir Mujahid, told Al Jazeera that the gunfight was ongoing, as Afghan special forces rushed to the scene. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The Taliban are still fighting with the security forces,&#8221; Mujahid said.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement, the Presidential Palace condemned the attack &#8220;in the strongest possible terms&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The explosion has caused a lot of damage to the government,&#8221; Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n<p>This is the first major attack since the Taliban announced the start of its yearly &#8220;spring offensive&#8221; last week.<\/p>\n<p>The US embassy said it was not affected by the blast. The NATO military coalition also said it was unaffected.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-11786 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/6f02dba3212c4a28bed8e2dbf47e18cb_18.jpg\" alt=\"The blast struck a densely packed neighbourhood close to several military compounds\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{At least six killed and many more wounded in first major Taliban attack since the group announced it &#8220;spring offensive&#8221;.} At least six people were killed and many wounded when a suicide car bomber blew himself up near the defence ministry in the heart of the Afghan capital, police said. Al Jazeera&#8217;s Qais Azimy, reporting [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-24722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24722\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24722"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=24722"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=24722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}