Explosion at Kabul Chinese restaurant kills at least 7, injures dozen

An explosion at a restaurant in downtown Kabul on Monday killed at least seven people and wounded about a dozen more, police and an Italian charity said. The blast happened in the Shahr-e-Naw district, and Afghan authorities said the cause was under investigation.

Kabul police command spokesman Khalid Zadran said the restaurant was a Chinese restaurant in the Shahr-e-Naw district and that the blast occurred near the restaurant’s kitchen. He said the restaurant was jointly owned by an Afghan man, a Chinese national and his wife, and that the restaurant was popular with Chinese Muslims.

Zadran said one Chinese national and six Afghans were killed, and he said several others were wounded. He added that the cause of the blast had not been officially identified and was still being investigated.

The Italian charity EMERGENCY said its surgical center in Kabul, located near the site of the explosion, received 20 people from the blast, including seven who were already dead. EMERGENCY said the number of casualties was still provisional.

Dejan Panic, EMERGENCY’s country director in Afghanistan, said the injured included four women and a child. He said the wounded, some of whom were being assessed for surgery, had suffered lacerations and bruises.

China’s state broadcaster CCTV said two Chinese people were seriously injured and a security guard was killed in the blast. Local television station Tolo News aired footage showing people running and walking in the street, with smoke and dust billowing behind them.

Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, “strongly condemned the bomb blast at a Chinese restaurant in Kabul,” according to a statement from his office. The statement said Zardari accused Afghanistan’s Taliban government of failing to honor ceasefire agreements, “particularly the obligation to prevent the use of Afghan soil for the export of terrorism,” and said “no terrorist groups should be allowed safe havens in Afghanistan.”

Zardari also said that “terrorists operating out of Afghan soil” had affected other neighboring countries and singled out Tajikistan, his office said. Tajik authorities said Monday that their border guards had killed four gunmen who crossed into Tajikistan from Afghanistan overnight, while Afghan authorities said the four were drug smugglers.

The blast came amid strained relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan in recent months, including fighting in October that left dozens dead before Qatar brokered a ceasefire, according to the Associated Press report.