The explosion happened in Makrorayan-e-Char area in Kabul’s PD9 on Saturday morning, police said
DLP REPORT
KABUL
In the latest bombing that rocked Kabul, a former Afghan television presenter and two other civilians were killed in a bomb explosion in the Afghan capital city on Saturday.
A bomb was attached to a vehicle of Yama Siawash, a prominent political and current affairs presenter formerly associated with the country’s Tolo News, and it exploded near his residence in Kabul, said police spokesman Ferdaws Faramarz.
Siawash’s death drew strong condemnation from senior Afghan officials.
“Targeting journalists is targeting the freedom of expression and Siawash’s death is a big loss for our country,” Abdullah Abdullah, who heads the country’s overall peace and reconciliation process, said in a statement.
“This is an unforgivable and unforgettable crime.”
Sediq Sediqqi, spokesman for President Ashraf Ghani, also condemned the killing of “one of the most talented [television] presenters” in Afghanistan.
Violence has spiked across Afghanistan in recent months despite the Taliban and Afghan government engaging in peace talks to end the country’s long-running conflict.
According to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, also known as SIGAR, average daily enemy-initiated attacks in Afghanistan were up 50% this year from July 1 to September 30 as compared to three-month period before that.
The SIGAR report stated that anti-government forces accounted for at least 83% of civilian casualties this quarter. The Taliban, according to the report, were responsible for 38% of those deaths and injuries. This was an overall increase in casualties since the last quarter.
Last week, an attack on Kabul University killed 22 people, many of them students. The ISIL (ISIS) affiliate claimed responsibility for the attack as well as for another assault on an educational institution in Kabul on October 24 that killed 24 people.
Government negotiators and the Taliban are in Qatar to find an end to decades of relentless war in Afghanistan, but the two sides have made little progress.
The talks were part of a negotiated agreement between the United States and the Taliban to allow American and NATO troops to withdraw from Afghanistan, ending 19 years of military engagement.
