The Islamic State (IS) group claimed responsibility on Sunday (August 18th) for the suicide bomber attack that left at least 63 dead and 182 wounded the night before at a wedding in Kabul, the Afghan capital.
"The kamikaze brother Abu Assem al-Pakistani (...) yesterday managed to reach a large gathering (...) of apostates" in Kabul and "detonated his belt once in the middle of the crowd", is he wrote in a statement posted on Telegram by the ultra-radical organization.
"After the arrival of security personnel, mujahideen blew up a car bomb," the source said.
"A scene of massacre and carnage"
"Among the victims there are women and children," Interior Ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi said according to which the attack was the work of a "suicide bomber".
"Participants were dancing and partying when the explosion occurred" shortly before 11 pm, a guest wounded by bursts in his arms and abdomen testified. "It was chaos, a scene of massacre and carnage," another 22-year-old wounded man, who was interrogated on his hospital bed by AFP, said in a shaking voice. According to Hameed Quresh, who lost one of his brothers in the blast, more than 1,000 people were participating in the festivities.
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"They changed my happiness to grief, I lost my brother, my friends, my family ... I will never be happy again," the groom, named Mirwais, told local television. "Yesterday afternoon, the guests came to my wedding with smiling faces, the evening, we left their bodies of the room" of marriage, he was sorry, indicating that his wife "does not cease to faint ".
The Taliban, who have waged an insurgency war since being ousted by a US-led coalition in 2001, quickly denied any involvement. ISIS, Sunni radical Islamists, has repeatedly targeted the Shiite community of Afghanistan, whose families were married.
Hope for a peace agreement
Many sentencing messages have flown from embassies in Afghanistan, NATO and UN missions. Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah said that "this heinous and inhuman attack is indeed a crime against humanity".
The attack came as the Afghan population, exasperated by indiscriminate violence, hopes for an agreement between the United States and the Taliban that would pave the way for peace negotiations between the Afghan government and the insurgent group.
The deal would see a gradual withdrawal of 14,000 US troops in return for the promise that Islamist militias, who have long harbored al Qaeda, would not allow Afghanistan to become a shelter for the jihadists.