MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan: The death toll from a Taliban truck bombing at the German consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif city rose to at least six Friday, with more than 100 others wounded.
The Taliban said the bombing late Thursday, which tore a massive crater in the road and overturned cars, was a “revenge attack” for US air strikes this month in the volatile province of Kunduz that left 32 civilians dead.
The explosion, followed by sporadic gunfire, reverberated across the usually tranquil northern city, shearing off the facades of nearby buildings and blowing out windows several miles away.
“The suicide attacker rammed his explosives-laden car into the wall of the German consulate,” local police chief Sayed Kamal Sadat told AFP.
All German staff from the consulate were unharmed, according to the foreign ministry in Berlin.
The city’s hospitals received six dead bodies, including two killed by bullets, said local doctor Noor Mohammad Fayez.
At least 128 others were wounded, some of them critically and many with shrapnel injuries, he added.
Deputy police Chief Abdul Razaq Qadri gave a death toll of seven, including two motorcyclists who were shot dead by German forces close to the consulate after they refused to heed their warning to stop. A suspect had also been detained near the diplomatic mission on Friday morning, Qadri added.
“The consulate building has been heavily damaged,” the German foreign ministry said in a statement. “Our sympathies go out to the Afghan injured and their families.”
