Kabul slams Pakistan’s ‘messages of war’

KABUL: Afghan President Ashraf Ghani accused Pakistan on Monday of sending “messages of war” and harboring bombmaking camps, after a wave of devastating blasts in Kabul killed at least 56 people.

A Taliban suicide car bomber killed five people Monday near the entrance of Kabul’s international airport, the latest in a barrage of violence that has convulsed the Afghan capital since Friday.
The Taliban are stepping up their summer offensive amid a bitter leadership dispute following the announcement of the death of long-time supremo Mullah Omar.
Since coming to power last year Ghani has actively courted Pakistan, which has historically backed the Taliban, in what experts call a calculated gambit to pressure the militants to the negotiating table.
But in a volte-face Monday, Ghani slammed Pakistan for failing to rein in the Taliban as peace talks falter and insurgents step up attacks that are a test for beleaguered Afghan security forces.
“The last few days have shown that suicide bomber training camps and bomb-producing factories which are killing our people are as active as before in Pakistan,” Ghani told a news conference. “We hoped for peace but we are receiving messages of war from Pakistan.”
In Monday’s attack a suicide car bomber tore through a crowd during the lunchtime rush at a checkpoint where passengers undergo the first round of body checks before entering the airport.
Smoke billowed from the scene of the explosion, which killed at least five people, with officials warning that the toll could rise further.
An AFP photographer saw pieces of charred flesh littered around the checkpoint.
Ambulances with wailing sirens rushed to the site and were seen removing bodies from the area, which was strewn with the twisted and mangled wreckage of burning vehicles.
The Taliban said two vehicles belonging to foreign coalition forces were the target.
Ghani’s comments on Monday are his strongest yet against it.
“In my telephone call with (Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Sunday), I told Pakistan to see terrorism in Afghanistan the same way it sees terrorism in Pakistan,” he said.
“I ask the Pakistani government if the mass killings of Shah Shaheed had happened in Islamabad and the perpetrators were in Afghanistan, what would you do?” he said, referring to a Kabul neighborhood that suffered a fatal truck bombing on Friday.