Suddenly a heavy explosion shook the neighborhood, shattering windows as far as a mile away. Inside the bank, the rooms went dark and shards of glass hit Tayyeb in the head.
“We couldn’t find anyone or anything,” said Tayyeb, who like many Afghans has only one name. “After maybe a minute we could see some of our colleagues had been injured because of broken glass.”
Colleagues brought the victims to a nearby hospital run by an Italian medical charity. Across the city, the Afghan health ministry said, at least 80 people were killed and more than 350 injured in the blast, one of the worst to strike Kabul since the 2001 U.S.-led military invasion and a bloody reminder that Afghans continue to suffer in militant violence far from the international spotlight.
The Afghan government’s media center later on Wednesday raised the death toll to 90 killed and 400 wounded, quoting a statement from the Afghan Ulema Council, the country’s top religious body.
One witness said the explosion — which occurred on the fifth day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan — was caused by a bomb planted in a large tanker truck that left a crater in the road more than 30 feet deep.
Afghan interior ministry spokesman Najib Danesh said the blast occurred in Zanbaq Square, which is close to the German Embassy and the headquarters of Roshan, the country’s leading telecommunications company. Danesh said officials had not determined the target of the attack.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the blast. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed in a statement that his group had no part in the attack.
Speculation immediately fell on militants loyal to Islamic State, which had claimed responsibility for the deadliest recent attack in Kabul — the bombing of a protest by ethnic Hazaras last July that killed more than 80 people.
“This was the heaviest blast I have ever witnessed in Kabul,” said Daud, a 36-year-old shopkeeper in the Shahr-e-Naw district about a mile away.
The German Embassy was heavily damaged in the attack, with several staff members injured and an Afghan security guard killed, according to a statement from German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel. All embassy staff members were safe, Gabriel said.
Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel. All embassy staff members were safe, Gabriel said.