KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The latest on a suicide bombing inside a crowded wedding hall in Afghanistan’s capital (all times local):
2:45 a.m.
A witness to a suicide bombing at a wedding party in Afghanistan’s capital says the attacker set off the explosives near the stage where children had gathered.
Gul Mohammad tells The Associated Press that everyone gathered there was killed. Another witness, Mohammad Toofan, says that “a lot of guests were martyred.”
Afghan officials have not released an official death toll, but Interior Ministry spokesman Nusrat Rahimi has said dozens of people were dead or wounded in the Saturday night attack in Kabul.
A relative of the groom says some 1,200 people had been invited to the wedding hall.
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Midnight
An Afghan official says dozens of people have been killed or wounded in an explosion that ripped through a wedding hall in Kabul while hundreds were thought to be inside.
Interior Ministry spokesman Nusrat Rahimi tells The Associated Press the blast occurred at the Dubai City wedding hall in western Kabul, a part of the city that many in the minority Shiite Hazara community call home.
The explosion shattered more than a week of calm in the Afghan capital. Ten days ago a Taliban car bomb aimed at Afghan security forces ripped through a busy west Kabul neighborhood in the same district, killing 14 people and wounding 145. Most were civilians.
That blast and this one occurred on the same road.
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11:42 p.m.
An Afghan official says an explosion has occurred at a wedding hall in western Kabul and casualties are feared.
Interior Ministry spokesman Nusrat Rahimi tells The Associated Press there is no immediate information on the cause of the blast, which occurred on a busy Saturday night.
Kabul’s brightly lit wedding halls can hold hundreds of people.
The explosion shattered more than a week of calm in the Afghan capital. Ten days ago a Taliban car bomb aimed at Afghan security forces ripped through a busy west Kabul neighborhood, killing 14 people and wounding 145 — most of them women, children and other civilians.
