\n A suicide bomber on foot ripped through a crowd of Afghan Supreme Court employees Tuesday, killing at least 20 people and wounding 41 others in the second attack on government institutions in under a month.\n<\/p>\n
\n The assailant detonated the device in the parking lot as employees were boarding a bus to go home, leaving bodies and dismembered limbs scattered around the area, with women and children among the casualties.\n<\/p>\n
\n No group has so far claimed responsibility for the blast in the snow-laden Afghan capital, but it occurred as the Taliban are ramping up their nationwide insurgency even in the peak winter months when fighting usually abates.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"My father and I were exiting through the parking lot when a huge blast hit us,\" said a witness, breaking down in tears. \"My father is dead now. How will I live without him?\"\n<\/p>\n
\n The piercingly loud explosion shook nearby buildings, smashing windows and blasting debris onto the streets.\n<\/p>\n
\n Police blocked off the road around the high-profile compound located near the US embassy as panicked relatives of court employees began to gather and ambulances and fire trucks rushed to the scene.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Twenty people were killed (including 3 women & one child), and 41 others were injured in today's suicide attack in #Kabul,\" health ministry official Wahidullah Mayar wrote on Twitter.\n<\/p>\n
\n The ministry warned the toll could rise still further.\n<\/p>\n
\n There were scenes of desperation at the Italian-run Emergency hospital in Kabul as anxious civilians looking for missing relatives searched through the ambulances that brought the dead and wounded.\n<\/p>\n
\n - 'Crime against humanity' -\n<\/p>\n
\n President Ashraf Ghani condemned the attack in a statement, calling it a \"crime against humanity and an unforgivable act\".\n<\/p>\n
\n The carnage underscores growing insecurity in Afghanistan where local forces are struggling to combat a resilient Taliban insurgency as well as Al-Qaeda and Islamic State militants more than two years after NATO's combat mission ended.\n<\/p>\n
\n Last month twin suicide blasts claimed by Taliban fighters tore through employees exiting a parliament annex in Kabul, killing 30 people and wounding 80.\n<\/p>\n
\n On Monday the United Nations said civilian casualties in Afghanistan in 2016 were the highest recorded by the world body, with nearly 11,500 people -- one third of them children -- killed or wounded.\n<\/p>\n
\n The report comes as officials warn of a growing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, as unprecedented numbers of people flee the fighting while hundreds of thousands of failed asylum seekers are repatriated home.\n<\/p>\n
\n Earlier this month an official US watchdog said the death rate among Afghan troops and police soared last year as the government's overall control of the country declined significantly.\n<\/p>\n
\n The grim new statistics paint a picture of a beleaguered nation still in the grip of a security crisis, despite many years and billions of dollars spent building up Afghanistan's army and police.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Taliban have previously targeted the Supreme Court. They killed 15 civilians with a suicide car bomb at the entrance to the compound in 2013.\n<\/p>\n
\n At the time the insurgent group threatened further attacks on the judiciary if it continued to sentence its militants to death.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A suicide bomber on foot ripped through a crowd of Afghan Supreme Court employees Tuesday, killing at least 20 people and wounding 41 others in the second attack on government institutions in under a month. The assailant detonated the device in the parking lot as employees were boarding a bus to go home, leaving bodies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-31967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n