Afghan capital rocked by suicide bombing

The Afghan capital of Kabul was rocked Wednesday by a suicide bombing that killed 48 young men and women and injured at least 65 others at a private education center in the city — a devastating attack following a days-long surge of militant violence in the nation that has raised fresh concern over Washington’s strategy in the 17-year-old war.

The Islamic State’s affiliate in Afghanistan was blamed for the bombing that occurred in a predominantly Shiite enclave in Kabul, where authorities said the majority of those hurt or killed were students attending class, as well as faculty members at the education center.

The incident added new complexity to an already difficult period in the war-torn nation, where the Taliban has separately engaged in a growing push to seize territory outside the capital from U.S.-supported Afghan security forces.

Wednesday’s suicide bombing marked the latest assault by Sunni extremists against the country’s Shiite community.

In Washington, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders declined to comment specifically on the Kabul bombing, saying only the Trump administration remains firmly behind its current South Asia strategy, which has sought in recent months to increase military pressure on the Taliban with the goal of coercing the group into peace talks.

“We’re going to continue to review and look at the best ways to move forward,” said Mrs. Sanders, who also declined to comment on a series of surprise Taliban offensives that have unfolded this week in Afghanistan’s Baghlan and Ghanzni provinces.

“What I can tell you is that we’re committed to finding a political solution to end the conflict in Afghanistan,” she told reporters at the White House.

While the specter of rising Islamic State violence in Kabul loomed, the Taliban claimed credit Wednesday for attacks on a pair of Afghan military and police checkpoints in the northern Baghlan province that left 35 Afghan soldiers and nine policemen dead.

The strikes came as Afghan forces, backed by U.S. and NATO military advisers, were in the midst of an operation to clear the city of Ghazni, about 75 miles southeast of Kabul. Ghanzi was the target earlier this week of a large-scale assault by the Taliban, who briefly took over the city as well as several more rural areas of the surrounding Ghanzi province.

Authorities say the Ghanzi assault has left more than 100 Afghan troops dead in recent days and offered a stark reminder of the Taliban’s ongoing capability to launch large-scale attacks against major population centers. The assault, which caught Afghan and U.S. commanders off guard, has raised questions on the viability of the Trump administration’s strategy.

The most recent figures published by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan maintain that Afghanistan’s U.S.-backed central government in Kabul holds sway over roughly 56 percent of the country’s 407 districts.

But private analysts are skeptical of the metrics used to determine whether a particular area is under government or Taliban control. Some areas determined to be within the grasp of Kabul are areas where government forces only control a small portion of a district or provincial center.

The assault on Ghazni, meanwhile, was widely seen as a show of force ahead of possible peace talks with the U.S. officials. An American delegation held an earlier meeting with Taliban representatives in Doha, Qatar, in June. The Trump administration has said it seeks to put the government of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in the lead of the talks — something Taliban leaders have so far resisted.

Away from the Taliban developments, concerns continue to swirl over the presence of Islamic State fighters in Afghanistan.

While no terrorist organization has claimed credit for Wednesday’s attack in Kabul, the nature of the target and the viciousness of the strike suggests it was the work of Islamic State’s Afghan cell, known as Islamic State in Iraq and Syria-Khorasan Group or ISIS-K.

The group has claimed credit or been suspected in executing 13 previous attacks on the Shiite community in Kabul alone, Jawad Ghawari, a member of the city’s Shiite clerical council, told the Associated Press.

In April, the group claimed credit for a dual suicide bombing that struck in the heart of downtown Kabul during evening rush hour. The initial blast, which killed and wounded scores of individuals, was followed by a second explosion by a suicide bomber disguised as a reporter on the scene of the initial attack. In the end, 25 people lay dead, including nine journalists.