A day after a suicide blast that left at least 90 dead, angry residents of Kabul were counting the cost of another brutal attack on their city —and asking how it was allowed to happen. The bombing, which struck Kabul's diplomatic quarter during rush hour on Wednesday morning, came just a few days into Ramadan, a time when Muslim families come together to observe the holy month.
Instead, relatives were burying the dead and tending the wounds of the 461 confirmed injured. Most of the wounded were taken to the city's three major hospitals, where emergency wards remain packed with those caught up in the massive blast. As doctors worked around the clock, hospitals sent out urgent calls for more blood to treat many with critical injuries. By Thursday morning, Afghan security forces had cordoned off streets hundreds of meters from the site, and workers were busy filling in the crater left by the blast. Meanwhile, traffic around the secure zone had returned to its usual, snarled state. Near a security checkpoint, around 40 protesters chanted anti-ISIS slogans and called for "death" to the Taliban.
Afghanistan's intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security, issued a statement attributing blame to the Haqqani Network, a Taliban-affiliated group in Pakistan. It alleged the group had received help from ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service. As the nation grieved, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani extended his "deepest condolences" in a live televised address. "It was a brutal act which has caused our countrymen grief during the holy month of Ramadan," he said.
Reporting from the city Thursday, CNN's Muhammad Lila said people were angry that so much money was spent by so many countries to safeguard Afghanistan's security and the attack still couldn't be stopped. "The fact that this can happen in the country's capital, that a truck filled with so many explosives could just drive up and detonate. There's a lot of anger right now directed at officials," he said. However, Pakistan strongly rejected as "baseless" the Afghan allegations that the Taliban-linked militants with the help of Pakistani spy agency ISI carried out the bombing in Kabul. "The accusatory approach is unhelpful towards efforts to peace," Foreign Office (FO) spokesman Nafees Zakaria said during the weekly media briefing.
The Afghan intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), said early findings showed the Haqqani network with the assistance of the ISI carried out the attack.