No evidence yet insiders aided hospital attack

KABUL (Pajhwok): Government officials on Wednesday said 24 people, including some generals, have been arrested over a deadly attack on a military hospital in Kabul.

Claimed Daesh or Islamic State group, five attackers were involved in the March 8 assault on the 400-bed Sardar Mohammad Daud Khan hospital, defence and interior ministry officials told a press conference here.

Deputy defence minister for strategies and intelligence, Gen. Hilaluddin Hilal, said all the five attackers entered the military hospital in a car.

Then one of them detonated explosives wrapped around his body at the hospital’s gate and the remaining four launched their attack, he said.

To questions how the attackers were allowed to enter the hospital, Gen. Hilal said about 2000 people worked at the hospital where daily 4000 people visited with their patients and the enemy had benefitted from the security vaccum created due to the rush.

He said number plate of the car the attackers used was fake and the car’s owner and the security guard to allowed the car to enter the hspital due to negligence had been arrested.

Gen. Hilal said 24 people had been arrested in connection with the attack and they included from general to soldier and hospital staff.

He said the investigation into the attack was not yet finished and they had found no evidence to show the attackers had inside help. He said the CCTV camera footage was being investigated.

Hilal said Ministry of Defence officials had wrongly put the toll at 31 dead and 99 injured on the first day of the attack. He said the exact toll was 50 dead and 31 injured.

However, some Wolesi Jirga members said 170 people had been killed and 150 others wounded in the attack, but Gen. Hilal called the figures as wrong.

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