Updated:// At least 25 people were killed and 50 others injured on Saturday in a string of blasts near a girls’ school in Afghanistan’s capital on Saturday, local media reported.
The Interior Ministry confirmed that three blasts occurred near the Sayed-ul-Shuhada High School in the western part of Kabul, local broadcaster Tolo News reported.
The blasts took place as students were leaving the school and there are reports that they “occurred as a result of three rockets.”
Earlier, the Taliban had denied the Afghan Defense Ministry’s report that the movement suffered significant losses as a result of heavy fighting over the first four months of 2021.
According to the ministry data, the period in question was the deadliest for the Taliban, as 6,320 group members were killed and 2,790 others were injured in clashes in different provinces across the country. The highest number of casualties in the past four months — 2,099 — was reported in the southern Kandahar province.
“I strongly reject the enemy’s claim … Yesterday, the Ministry of Defense claimed to have killed 110 Taliban [members] in Helmand. While one of our persons was killed, the MoD is not in a position to inflict so many casualties on the Taliban,” the group’s spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, told Sputnik.
The defense ministry, in turn, maintained to Sputnik that its figures on Taliban casualties were accurate.
“The information we have gathered is accurate. We identify the number of Taliban [militants] … before an attack and after an attack, residents tell us about the figures that there are still Taliban bodies left in the fighting … the locals are cooperating with us in collecting the data,” ministry spokesman Fawad Aman said.
The Afghan government and Taliban militants continue fighting each other despite the ongoing intra-Afghan talks in Qatar’s capital of Doha and the withdrawal of US forces that began last week.
