All of the victims were people who had gathered there to collect their monthly salaries, said Inamullah Samangani, head of the government’s Kandahar Information and Culture Department.
The Daesh group’s affiliate, a major Taliban rival, has conducted attacks on schools, hospitals, mosques and Shiite areas throughout Afghanistan.
The militant group said in a statement posted on its news agency, Aamaq, late Thursday that the suicide bomber detonated his explosive belt among the Taliban gathered near the bank to receive their salaries.
Kandahar city is a spiritual and political center for Afghanistan’s rulers because the Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, is based there and his decisions on major issues are implemented by authorities in Kabul, the capital.
The Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021 during the chaotic departure of US and NATO troops after 20 years. Despite initial promises of a more moderate stance, the Taliban gradually reimposed a harsh interpretation of Islamic law, or Shariah, as they did during their previous rule of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.
The death toll from a suicide bombing in Afghanistan’s Kandahar early Thursday has reached at least 20 people, a source at a major hospital in the southern city told AFP.
“Mirwais Hospital has received 22 people killed since this morning from the explosion,” the source said on condition of anonymity. Taliban officials have said three people were killed and 12 wounded in the attack, which targeted a bank.
Afghanistan’s capital is Kabul but Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada lives in Kandahar city, in the southern province of the same name that is the birthplace of the Taliban movement.
The explosion at around 8:00 am (0330 GMT) targeted a group of people waiting outside the New Kabul Bank branch in central Kandahar city, said Inamullah Samangani, director of information and culture of Kandahar province. “A suicide attack occurred,” he told AFP.
“Commonly our compatriots gather there to collect their salaries,” he said, adding that the “victims were civilians”.
Taliban authorities had surrounded the area outside the bank and did not let journalists close to the site.
However, an AFP journalist saw what appeared to be unconscious people or dead bodies being loaded into ambulances in the wake of the blast. Firefighters and security personnel were clearing the area, where blood, scraps of clothes and shoes littered the ground.
