New bombing hits Afghanistan before Taliban cease-fire expires

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June 17, 2018 3:18 PM

JALALABAD, Afghanistan — A day after President Ashraf Ghani announced that the government would extend its cease-fire with the Taliban, the lull in the long-running war appeared to be all but over Sunday.

A deadly explosion rocked the city of Jalalabad, in Nangarhar province, as insurgents, government officials and civilians mingled together in the last hours of a temporary peace.

The Taliban also announced that it would not reciprocate the government’s offer: The fighting would resume after their cease-fire expired late Sunday, a spokesman for the group said.

Dr. Najibullah Kamawal, head of public health in Nangarhar province, said at least 17 people were killed and 50 others wounded in the blast Sunday.

Attaullah Khogyani, a spokesman for the governor of Nangarhar, said he feared those numbers would rise.

The explosion occurred a day after a similar gathering of Taliban members and Afghan security forces in Nangarhar was shattered by a bombing that killed 36 people and wounded more than 60 others.

Some officials said that was a suicide bombing; others said it was a car bomb.

The Islamic State group’s offshoot in Afghanistan claimed responsibility for the Saturday bombing. No group immediately claimed the blast Sunday.

Ghani said in a speech Saturday that he would extend his government’s unilateral cease-fire after it expires Tuesday.

But a spokesman for the Taliban said Sunday that the group would resume fighting after its separate, three-day cease-fire ends Sunday.

The two explosions in Nangarhar were a symbol of how complicated the war in Afghanistan remains, even as the overlapping cease-fires had offered Afghans, who are killed by the dozens every day, a brief movement of peace.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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