Pakistan condemns terrorist attack in Afghanistan

ISLAMABAD (92 News) – Pakistan has strongly condemned the terrorist attack on the office of Amrullah Saleh, a Vice Presidential candidate for the upcoming Presidential elections in Afghanistan. In a statement tonight, Foreign Office spokesperson Dr Mohammad Faisal said Pakistan condemns terrorism in all its forms and manifestations. He said Pakistan fully supports the democratic process in Afghanistan. “We stand with our Afghan brothers and sisters in their efforts to restore complete peace in the country through an inclusive Afghan-led and Afghan-owned process,” he added. Earlier today, a bomb has targeted the Kabul office of President Ashraf Ghani’s running mate Amrullah Saleh – wounding the vice presidential candidate on the first day of campaigning for Afghanistan’s September 28 presidential election. Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi said two people were killed and several civilians were injured by the blast on a road near the private Ghalib University. Mr Saleh was lightly wounded by shrapnel and then evacuated from the office by his bodyguards. Photographs shared on social media showed him surrounded by bodyguards and with a small injury to his right arm. Ghani said: “My brother, true son of the Afghan soil and first vice president candidate of my electoral team, Amrullah Saleh, has survived a complex attack by enemies of the state. We are relieved and thank the almighty that attack has failed.” Saleh has been a vociferous opponent of the Taliban and Pakistan, and led Afghanistan’s NDS intelligence agency before joining politics with the Green Trend movement. “At around 4:40 pm (1210 GMT), first a blast occurred near Green Trend office… then a number of attackers entered that office,” interior ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi told AFP. Several civilians were killed in the attack near a busy intersection in the capital. Photographs shared on Twitter by Rahmatullah Nabil, a former Afghan intelligence chief who also is a candidate for the presidency, and Tamim Asey, a former Afghan deputy defense minister, show Saleh sitting in a garden with blood stains on his right arm. He was surrounded by security guards.