Afghan Governor Left Injured After Being Targeted By Suicide Bomber

Provincial Governor of Afghanistan’s Laghman province, Rahmatullah Yarmal, is slightly wounded after his convoy was targeted by a suicide car bomber.

At least 8 people, including four civilians were killed and 30 others left injured in the attack on Monday in Mihterlam, the provincial capital.

Tareq Arian, spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said that four civilians and four of Yarmal’s bodyguards were killed.

The wounded included 28 civilians and two other guards.

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Back-to-back targeted attacks

The attack comes a day after another car bomb targeted a government building in eastern Afghanistan and killed 15 people and wounding nearly 40 others.

The explosion occurred at an administrative building that also housed some military facilities in the Ghani Khel district of Nangarhar province, according to the governor’s spokesman Attaullah Khogyani.

“The car bomb detonated at the entrance of the district headquarters building. Several armed attackers tried to enter the building after the attack but were killed by security forces,” he said.

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Responsibility for attack unknown

It comes as President Ashraf Ghani on Monday left for Doha to meet with Qatari officials, three weeks after the launch of landmark peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

Ghani will first stop in Kuwait to offer condolences over the death of emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, his spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said.

Talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government negotiators, aimed at ending Afghanistan’s 19-year conflict, have stalle d over disagreements on how to frame a code of conduct that will guide the broader talks.

No one has so far claimed responsibility for the Laghman attack, but the Taliban are active in the region.

Representatives of the Afghan government and the Taliban are holding intra-Afghan negotiations in Qatar, where the Taliban have had a political office for many years.

The negotiations are meant to end the country’s decades-long long war, following a US-Taliban peace deal signed in February in Doha.

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