At least 19 people were killed and 43 wounded when two explosions, followed by gunfire, hit Afghanistan’s biggest military hospital in the capital Kabul, interior ministry sources told Al Jazeera on Tuesday.
The gunshots were also heard near the Sardar Mohammad Daud Khan military hospital in the Afghan capital, according to witnesses and a government spokesman.
Bilal Karimi, deputy spokesman of the Islamic Emirate, told reporters that at least two blasts took place at the entrance of the 400-bed hospital in Kabul’s 10th district. Witnesses told Al Jazeera it was a car bomb.
“Security forces are deployed to the area, there is no information about casualties,” he said on Twitter.
A Taliban official later said a suicide bomber and gunmen were behind an attack.
“The attack was initiated by a suicide bomber on a motorcycle who blew himself up at the entrance of the hospital,” said the official on condition on anonymity, adding the assailants had all been killed.
Earlier, interior ministry spokesman Saeed Khosty said there were casualties in the blasts, but did not confirm the death toll.
Photographs shared by residents showed a plume of smoke after the blasts in the former diplomatic zone in the Wazir Akbar Khan area in central Kabul.
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