Seven people were killed after a roadside bomb exploded in northern Afghanistan’s biggest city Mazar-a-Sharif on Tuesday. According to the local officials, the people were petroleum company employees who were travelling to their workplace in a bus. This was the latest in the serious of bomb attacks that have taken place in various parts of Afghanistan since the return of the Taliban.
Most of the bomb blasts were caused by the local chapter of the Islamic State (IS) but no group has claimed responsibility for the explosion that took place on Tuesday.
“I was reading the Quran on my phone screen and there was a boom,” a survivor told AFP.
Another survivor, who was identified as Mohammad Hanif, told AFP that there 52 people on the bus at the time of the explosion and many of them sustained injured due to the shrapnel.
The official spokesperson for the Balkh province police department Asif Waziri said that seven people were killed while six were seriously injured. They were taken promptly to the hospital.
“The bomb was placed in a cart by the roadside. It was detonated as the bus arrived,” he said.
Meanwhile, a member of the IS in Afghanistan was arrested for an attack on Pakistan’s embassy in Kabul. During the attack, a security guard was wounded, and Pakistan called it an assassination attempt.
“This person is a citizen of a foreign country and a member of IS,” the spokesperson for the police said.
