{"id":12782,"date":"2018-08-26T05:25:11","date_gmt":"2018-08-26T05:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=12782"},"modified":"2018-08-26T05:25:11","modified_gmt":"2018-08-26T05:25:11","slug":"suicide-attack-in-jalalabad-claims-at-least-seven-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=12782","title":{"rendered":"Suicide attack in Jalalabad claims at least seven lives"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"body-200771816342556199\" readability=\"91.923255814\">\n<p class=\"speakable\"><span>A suicide blast <span>outside an election commission office\u00a0<\/span><span>in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad has\u00a0<\/span>killed at least seven people and wounded several others, sources told Al Jazeera.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">The target of Saturday&#8217;s attack appeared to be a protest camp in Nangarhar province, where a group of people were rallying in support of a candidate disqualified from parliamentary elections due to take place in October.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">Attaullah Khogyani, a spokesman for the provincial governor, said the blast happened when supporters of the disqualified candidate were trying to shut down the election commission office.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We had requested the protesters to stop their demonstrations because they could be targeted by fighters but they rejected our security message,&#8221; said Khogyani.<\/p>\n<p>August has already been a bloody month in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/country\/afghanistan.html\">Afghanistan<\/a> with the Taliban increasing attacks on security forces across the country and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/organisations\/isis-isil.html\">ISIL<\/a>, also known as ISIS) group targeting the capital Kabul, with hundreds killed according to estimates.<\/p>\n<p>A witness told AFP news agency that the blast was caused by a suicide bomber detonating near a tent full of protesters and that security forces had cordoned off the area.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It was a huge blast and it shook our home,&#8221; said Mirza Amin, who added he lived 50 metres from the site of the blast. Earlier this month, a suicide bomber blew himself up outside an Afghan election office in <span class=\"highlight\">Kabul\u00a0<\/span>when protesters gathered to challenge the commission&#8217;s decision to disqualify 35 candidates.<\/p>\n<p>The blast comes nearly a week after President <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/indepth\/features\/2014\/07\/profile-ashraf-ghani-20147883632825529.html\">Ashraf Ghani<\/a> offered a conditional three-month ceasefire to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/organisations\/taliban.html\">Taliban<\/a>, a move welcomed by the United States and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/organisations\/nato.html\">NATO<\/a> after nearly 17 years of war.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A suicide blast outside an election commission office\u00a0in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad has\u00a0killed at least seven people and wounded several others, sources told Al Jazeera. The target of Saturday&#8217;s attack appeared to be a protest camp in Nangarhar province, where a group of people were rallying in support of a candidate disqualified from&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":12783,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}