At least 87 die in latest spate of violence
MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan — Taliban insurgents overran an Afghan army base and a police checkpoint in northern Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing at least 39 soldiers and police officers, officials said, and a suicide bomber in the capital killed at least 48 people in a classroom.
Hundreds of Taliban fighters carried out the predawn attacks on two units of Afghan forces in the Baghlan-e-Markazi district of Baghlan province, according to a police official who was at the scene and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.
The official said the fighting lasted five hours and resulted in the deaths of 30 soldiers and nine local police officers. Two other soldiers were also wounded in the battle, he said.
It was the second major attack on an army base in northern Afghanistan in recent days; on Monday, the Taliban killed or captured an entire company of 106 soldiers in the Ghormach district of Faryab province in the north of the country.
Separately on Wednesday, a suicide bomber detonated explosives hidden in his vest inside a classroom at a university preparatory course in Kabul, the capital, according to Hashmat Stanikzai, the spokesman for Kabul Police Department. Wahidullah Majrooh, a spokesman for the Ministry of Public Health, said that at least 48 people had died in the attack and that 67 others had been wounded. The attack took place in a Shiite neighborhood in western Kabul.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the suicide bombing, but schools, mosques and a voter registration center in the same neighborhood have been bombed by the Islamic State. Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, said in a WhatsApp message that his group had not been involved in the Kabul attack.
President Ashraf Ghani declared Wednesday that the battle for Ghazni city in eastern Afghanistan, which has been besieged by Taliban insurgents since Friday, was nearly over, with Afghan forces controlling all but one neighborhood.
The United States and NATO launched air strikes and sent military advisers to aid Afghan forces as they fight for the city, just 75 miles from the Afghan capital with a population of some 270,000 people.