Lone Plane’s Bombing Raid on Afghan Capital Kills 7
KABUL, Afghanistan — An air raid here Sunday afternoon by a single plane killed at least seven people and wounded 12, residents said.
Bombs hit a two-story house in a residential district of northern Kabul near the airport, which is used for military and civilian traffic and has been targeted in the past by forces opposing the Taliban, a fundamentalist Islamic movement.
“Most of the dead and wounded came from a house where the owner was hosting a lunch for his friends and relatives,†said an onlooker.
The raid was one of three Sunday. Early in the morning a plane dropped at least three bombs near the airport. After nightfall a plane dropped at least two bombs. There were no reports of casualties in either of those raids.
Meanwhile, a military alliance fighting the Taliban, which controls more than three-quarters of Afghanistan, including the capital, claimed Sunday that it had captured the strategic city of Charikar, about 35 miles north of Kabul, and the nearby Bagram air base.
A Taliban spokesman confirmed the loss of Charikar but denied that Bagram had fallen. There was no independent information on the situation.
The Taliban briefly captured most of northern Afghanistan earlier this year but has been gradually losing ground since.
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