Afghanistan rocked by explosion, dozens feared dead

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Dozens of people are dead or wounded after an explosion ripped through a wedding party on a busy Saturday night in Afghanistan capital of Kabul, a government official has confirmed.

Reports indicate that hundreds of people were inside the Dubai City Wedding Hall, located in western Kabul, at the time of the explosion.

Interior Ministry spokesman Nusrat Rahimi told The Associated Press there was no immediate information on the cause of the blast.

However, a spokesman for Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani suggested it was a suicide attack.

“Devastated by the news of a suicide attack inside a wedding hall in Kabul. A heinous crime against our people”, said Ghani’s spokesman Sediq Seddiqi.

“How is it possible to train a human and ask him to go and blow himself (up) inside a wedding?!!” Seddiqi, added in a message posted on Twitter.

The blast shattered a period of relative calm.

Earlier this month, a Taliban car bomb aimed at Afghan security forces detonated on the same road in a busy west Kabul neighbourhood, killing 14 people and wounding 145 — most of them women, children and other civilians.

Kabul’s huge, brightly lit wedding halls are centres of community life in a city weary of decades of war, with thousands of dollars spent on a single evening.

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