KABUL: At least three people were killed and about 20 injured in a series of five bomb blasts on Saturday targeting Taliban vehicles in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad.
The city is the capital of Nangarhar province, a stronghold of the Afghan branch of Daesh that has been active since the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in mid-August.
The group carried out a series of bombings at Kabul airport on Aug. 26 that killed more than 180 people trying to flee the country in a Western airlift, but until Saturday there had been no major incidents since US-led NATO troops pulled out of Afghanistan at the end of August.
Meanwhile the US military has admitted that a drone strike targeting suspected Daesh militants in Kabul last month thatinstead killed seven children and three adult civilians was a mistake.
The strike during the final days of the US pullout was meant to target a Daesh vehicle laden with explosives that US intelligence believed with “reasonable certainty” was planning to attack Kabul airport, said US Central Command chiefGen. Frank McKenzie.
In fact, the driver of the vehicle was Zemari Ahmadi, an aid worker for Nutrition and Education International, andthe vehicle was carrying only water containers. Movements that the US military thought suspicious were Ahmadi picking up and dropping off colleagues.
An investigation had concluded that “the strike was a tragic mistake,” McKenzie said, and the US government was looking into how payments for damages could be made to the families of those killed.
“I offer my deepest condolences to surviving family members of those who were killed,” US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said.