Kabul — The death toll from a suicide attack near Kabul international airport has risen to 23, the health ministry said Monday. An AFP driver is 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 Afghan Vice-President Abdul Rashid Dostum on his return 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 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...
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