Kabul bombings

On March 1, a day after Taliban fighters killed 12 policemen in the southern Afghanistan province of Helmand, 23 people were killed and 106 were wounded in two attacks by the Taliban in the country’s capital, Kabul. 

In Kabul, most of the deaths occurred at a police station, where a suicide car bomber set off his explosives and a 5-hour gun battle ensued between police and another attacker. Not long after that attack, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives outside Afghanistan’s intelligence agency, located in eastern Kabul.

On Feb. 7 in Kabul, a suicide bomber targeted Afghanistan’s Supreme Court, killing at least 20 people and injuring more than 40 others. The bombing took place in the court’s parking lot as workers were heading to their cars at the end of the day. As of press time, no group had claimed responsibility for that attack.

According to the UN, 3,498 civilians were killed and 7,920 were injured by militant groups in Afghanistan in 2016. This was the most killed there in a single year since the UN began tracking civilian casualties in 2009. The Islamist militant groups Taliban and Daesh are both active in Afghanistan.