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28 March 2024

Afghan dog fighting blast kills 80: provincial governor

Published
By Agencies

A bomb that tore through a dog fighting match in Afghanistan's southern city of Kandahar Sunday killed 80 people and wounded many more, provincial govnernor Assadullah Khalid said.
 

"Tens of people have been killed and tens have been wounded," interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP earlier.

"It was a bombing but at this point we don't know if it was a suicide bombing or other bombing."

 

Dozens of bloodied boots and clothes lay among dead bodies and limbs, an AFP reporter on the scene said. Police reinforcements rushed to the scene as civilian and police cars and ambulances ferried the wounded to hospitals.

 

At least one big fighting dog was also killed, he said.

 

Witnesses said the blast appeared to have been a suicide bombing of the sort carried out by insurgents from the extremist Taliban movement.

 

"Hundreds of people had gathered and the dog fighting was under way when the explosion took place. It was a suicide bombing," a witness told AFP.

 

The Taliban were in government between 1996 and 2001 and last year carried out around 140 suicide attacks across Afghanistan.

 

The extremist religious movement rose from Kandahar province in the early 1990s. Kandahar city had seen a wave of suicide blasts and other attacks but these tailed off last year. (AFP)