At least one suicide bomber made it inside the cultural center, detonating in the middle of a student discussion. The Taliban denied responsibility.
KABUL, Afghanistan — At least 40 people were killed and dozens wounded on Thursday morning in a complex bomb attack that hit both a Shiite cultural center and the Afghan Voice Agency news organization in Kabul, officials said.
It was unclear what militant group was behind the attack, and there was no immediate claim of responsibility. The Taliban’s spokesman denied that the insurgents were behind it. In the past, Islamic State loyalists have singled out Shiites for attack, and the group claimed to be behind an attack last month on another news organization in Kabul, Shamshad TV.
In the assault on Thursday, one suicide bomber managed to enter the Shiite facility, the Tebyan cultural center and religious school, during a group discussion, and he detonated his explosive vest, said Sadiq Muradi, Kabul’s deputy police chief. Women and children were among the dead at the center, which accounted for the vast majority of the casualties.
Witnesses reported that at least two other explosions followed in the area, the Qalay Nazer neighborhood in western Kabul, including one blast at the entrance of the Afghan Voice Agency. A journalist at the agency, Sayed Abbas Hussaini, told Reuters that one reporter had been killed and another wounded.
A deputy spokesman for the Interior Ministry, Nasrat Rahimi, said that at least 40 people had been killed and another 30 wounded, but that was an initial accounting. He said that two blasts after the suicide bombing within the Tebyan center were caused by improvised explosive devices that inflicted relatively few casualties.
Later, Wahidullah Majrooh, a spokesman for the Health Ministry, said that 35 bodies and 20 wounded people had been taken to a hospital so far.
