Three rockets fall near Kabul airport and seven in residential areas, leaving one civilian dead and two others injured.
A series of rockets has struck the Afghan capital, killing at least one person and wounding two others, the second such attack in Kabul in less than a month.
“This morning, 10 rockets were fired from the Labe Jar neighborhood in Kabul,” Interior Ministry spokesman Tariq Arian told reporters on Saturday.
He said three rockets fell near Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport and seven in residential areas, leaving one civilian dead and two injured.
Rockets fired from a vehicle parked in the far north of the capital hit the Kabul airport compound, slightly damaging a Kam Air plane.
Kam Air, which started in 2003 and offers domestic and international flights, is Afghanistan’s first private airline.
A window of one of the aircraft parked at the airport was damaged by the ricochet of a projectile, according to an airport official who did not want to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media. The plane was empty and no one was injured.
Neither group took immediate responsibility for the attack and the target was not immediately clear.
Spectators watch municipal workers clean up and remove debris along a street after multiple rockets were fired in Kabul [Wakil Kohsar/AFP]
Violence has increased in Afghanistan in recent months, with several deadly attacks carried out in Kabul, despite the Taliban and the government holding peace talks since September in Qatar.
On November 21, eight people were killed when 23 rockets hit the capital in an attack claimed by an ISIL (ISIS) affiliate.
The ISIL affiliate also claimed two deadly assaults in Kabul that targeted schools, including one at Kabul University in which gunmen sprayed classrooms with bullets.
The authorities blamed the attacks on the educational centers of the Haqqani network, affiliated with the Taliban.
Outgoing US President Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed to end “wars forever,” including in Afghanistan, the longest-running American conflict in history that began with an invasion to dislodge the Taliban after the attacks. of September 11, 2001.
In November, the Pentagon said it would withdraw 2,000 troops from Afghanistan, speeding up the schedule set in a February agreement between Washington and the Taliban that calls for a full withdrawal by May 2021.
The agreement also stipulates that the insurgents will not target key cities in the country, although the Afghan authorities have blamed them for such attacks.
US President-elect Joe Biden, at a rare point of agreement with Trump, also advocates ending the Afghanistan war, although analysts believe he will not be as committed to a fast schedule.
In the past six months, the Taliban have carried out 53 suicide attacks and 1,250 bombings that killed 1,210 civilians and injured 2,500 others.