KABUL (Tolo News): Mohammadzai Kochi, police chief of Kabul’s police district 5 (PD5) was killed in an explosion that targeted his vehicle in downtown Kabul on Wednesday morning, security sources said.
The blast took place at around 08:55am local time in Baraki area in Kabul’s PD5, targeting his vehicle, the sources said, adding that two of his bodyguards were also killed in the blast. Kabul police said that two people were wounded in the blast, but did not provide further details. Kabul witnessed of three explosions on Wednesday.
The first explosion targeted a police vehicle in Qala-e-Abdul Ali area in Paghman district in Kabul province, police said, adding that the blast caused no casualties. The second blast hit a vehicle in Qowai Marzak area in downtown Kabul, leaving four people wounded, Kabul police said. Source said that the vehicle belonged to the Ministry of Labor. The third blast hit Kochi’s vehicle.
This comes a day after, four employees of the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development (MRRD) were killed in an attack by unidentified gunmen in Kabul, according to police. In the second incident, a driver for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was killed in the Macrorayan area in Kabul city this morning, the Ministry confirmed in a statement, saying one of its vehicles was struck by a “roadside mine blast.”
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. The US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) said in a report released on January 30 that the Taliban and Deash have increased targeted assassinations outside of Kabul and that the Taliban attacks in the Afghan capital are on the rise, with increasing targeted killings of government officials, civil society leaders and journalists.
“Five journalists were killed in the last two months of 2020, as well as a number of civil-society leaders,” the report says. The report says that violence trends high levels of insurgent and extremist violence continued in Afghanistan this quarter despite renewed calls from US officials for all sides to reduce violence in an effort to advance the ongoing peace process between the Taliban and the Afghan government.
Resolute Support, the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan, reported 2,586 civilian casualties from October 1 to December 31 last year, including 810 killed and 1,776 wounded, according to SIGAR report. The report says the proportion of casualties caused by IED increased by nearly 17 percent in this quarter, correlating with an increase in magnetically attached IEDs or “sticky bomb” attacks, the report said.
