KABUL: A Taliban suicide car bomber on Tuesday targeted staff at Afghanistan's top court, killing 15 civilians and wounding 40 others in the second attack in two days in the heavily fortified capital, police said.
Women and children were among those killed and injured in the powerful explosion at the entrance to the Supreme Court, near the US embassy as buses waited to take court staff home at the end of the working day, officials said.
The Taliban claimed responsibility and threatened further attacks on the judiciary if it continued to sentence to death members of its militia.
The bomber struck at around 4:00 pm (1130 GMT) in the crowded area, close to a block of residential flats home to middle-class Afghans.
General Mohammad Zahir, head of Kabul criminal investigations, said the bomber rammed one of the buses carrying Supreme Court staff.
“A suicide bomb hit at the back of a coaster causing lots of civilian casualties, dead and wounded,” Zahir told AFP.
The Taliban, the militia that is stepping up an 11-year insurgency against the Western-backed Afghan government as Nato troops prepare to withdraw next year, claimed responsibility for the attack.
In a statement, it said it had punished judges for “justifying the invading infidels” in sentencing to death Taliban prisoners held by the Afghan government.
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