JALALABAD: At least 15 people, mostly civilians, were killed and more than 40 others wounded in a truck bomb attack that targeted a government building in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday, officials said.
A suicide bomber detonated the vehicle full of explosives at the entrance of an administrative building that also housed some military facilities in the Ghani Khel district of Nangarhar province, the governor's spokesman Attaullah Khogyani told AFP.
"As a result, 13 civilians including one woman and four children were killed. Two members of security forces were also killed," he said.
Forty-two people, including four security forces members, were wounded, he said, adding that several armed attackers who tried to enter the building after the assault were also killed by security forces.
Provincial police spokesman Farid Khan confirmed the details.
Abdullah, a shopkeeper whose premises were partially destroyed in the attack, told AFP the blast was big. "There is a bazaar near the building, almost all the windows of the shops (in the bazaar) are broken. A lot of people have been killed and wounded. I helped about a dozen wounded people to be taken by car to the hospital," he said.
No one had so far claimed responsibility for the attack, but Khan blamed the Taliban.
The Taliban have stepped up attacks across the country, even as they meet for peace talks with Afghan government negotiators in Doha.
A roadside blast in central Afghanistan on Tuesday killed at least 14 civilians, mostly women and children, the interior ministry said.
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