Afghan official says sticky bomb blasts kill 2 in Kabul

Separate explosions, set off by sticky bombs attached to cars, killed at least two people and wounded five on Tuesday in the Afghan capital, a Kabul police official said. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks. The first bomb was attached to a military vehicle in central Kabul and wounded two military personnel, said Ferdus Faramarz, spokesman for the Kabul police chief. An hour later, the second bomb, in the northern part of the city, killed two people and wounded two others. A third sticky bomb wounded one person in western Kabul. Faramarz said police are investigating.

In recent months, the Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for multiple attacks in Kabul, including on schools and educational institutions that killed 50 people, most of them students. IS has also claimed responsibility for rocket attacks in December that targeted the key U.S. base in Afghanistan. There were no casualties in those attacks.

On Monday, a report by a U.S. government watchdog - the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, known as SIGAR said that Taliban attacks in the Afghan capital of Kabul are also on the rise, with increasing targeted killings of government officials, civil-society leaders and journalists.

SIGAR, which monitors the billions of dollars the U.S. spends in war-ravaged country, said that the proportion of casualties caused by improvised explosive devices increased by nearly 17% in the last quarter of 2020, correlating with an increase in attacks by magnetically attached bombs, or “sticky bombs."

The violence comes as Taliban representatives and the Afghan government last month resumed peace talks in Qatar, the Gulf Arab state where the insurgents maintain an office. The stop-and-go talks are aimed at ending decades of conflict but frustration and fear have grown over the recent spike in violence, and both sides blame one another.