Saudi Arabia condemned the twin bombings which occurred near the Ministry of Defence in the Afghan capital, Kabul in which dozens of people were killed and injured. An official source at the Foreign Ministry expressed Saudi Arabia’s condemnation and denunciation of the incident.

Saudi Arabia reiterated its solidarity with Afghanistan, and the source offered its condolences to the families of the victims and Afghanistan, its government and people, and wished the injured a speedy recovery.

Kabul has seen three consecutive attacks in the last few days; the first took place on Monday and the latest attack on an international non-governmental organisation lasted several hours and killed 41 people. In less than 12 hours, two consecutive bomb attacks took place near the Ministry of Defence and then an attack was carried out on the buildings housing the international NGO CARE in central Kabul by gunmen during the night. A spokesman for the Ministry of Health Waheed Majrooh told AFP that “41 people were killed and 110 others were wounded in yesterday’s attacks near the Ministry of Defence”.

It was previously reported that 24 people died and about a hundred were injured. According to the authorities, the first bomb was detonated by remote control and the second bombing was carried out by a suicide bomber. A spokesman for the Taliban Zabiullah Mujahid announced that the first attack targeted the Ministry of Defence and the second targeted the police. The blasts occurred within minutes of each other and their goal was to kill the largest amount of official employees who were leaving the ministry at the time to return to their homes.

In a statement, the South and South-East Asia Director Champa Patel said that “The basic rule of international humanitarian law is that parties to an armed conflict do not carry out premeditated attacks on civilians”.

The attack, which occurred near the office of the former Head of the National Directorate of Security Rahmatullah Nabil, started with a car bomb, and was then followed by random shooting. A column of smoke was still billowing from the site yesterday morning, and debris and broken glass littered the street.