Suicide bomber targets Afghan army recruits

At least 12 army recruits were killed when a suicide bomber targeted the bus in which they were travelling near Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. Reports relating to the number injured in the attack range from at least 26 up to 38. No group has claimed responsibility, but the attack bears the hallmarks of the Taliban, which routinely targets military recruits and recruitment centres. The army recruits tend to be heavily from the east and north of the country, and despite poor pay and bleak prospects, high unemployment continues to drive young men to join. The bombing followed a similar attack in the capital, Kabul, hours earlier, in which at least two people were killed and seven others injured, when a bomb exploded on a bus carrying employees of the education ministry.

KABUL, Afghanistan — A suicide bomber struck a bus of army recruits in eastern Afghanistan, killing at least 12 people and wounding dozens, officials said on Monday.

The Afghan Defense Ministry said in a statement that all those killed in the attack, at 4 p.m. in the Surkh Rod district of Nangarhar Province, were army recruits, and that at least 26 people were wounded. Attaullah Khogyani, a spokesman for the governor of Nangarhar, put the number of injured at 38.

“The bus was coming to Kabul from Jalalabad city when a bomber riding a Zarang three-wheeler blew himself up,” the Defense Ministry statement said.

The Afghan Army, which has struggled with casualties and attrition as it has taken the combat lead after NATO’s drawdown, recruits heavily in the east and north of the country. The army and the police lost a combined total of about 6,000 men in 2015, nearly half of those casualties coming in the southern province of Helmand, which is the country’s largest province both in terms of territory and opium production.