By Ayaz Gul
VOA News | May 12, 2020
ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN – Officials in Afghanistan say a suicide bombing of a funeral in an eastern province and a militant raid on a hospital in the capital, Kabul, have killed around 40 people and injured scores of others.
The Taliban insurgency quickly denied its involvement in Tuesday’s violence, prompting suspicions that Islamic State terrorists might have plotted the bloodshed.
IS took credit for Monday’s coordinated bomb blasts in Kabul, though the violence only caused injuries to few people.
Authorities in eastern Nangarahar province said scores of people were present at the funeral of an influential Afghan community police commander when a suicide bomber blew himself up there.
Separately, a group of unknown gunmen stormed the government-run hospital in Dasht-e-Barchi area of Kabul, killing at least 13 people and injuring 15 others. Officials said women, children and nurses were among the dead and wounded.
Interior Ministry spokesman Tariq Aryan told reporters on Tuesday that security forces quickly engaged the assailants and ended the siege after hours-long gun battles. He said more than 80 civilians, including women and children, had also been rescued in the process. Witnesses and officials reported several explosions during the siege.
The 100-bed hospital largely provides maternal care services with the support of Doctors Without Borders, the France-based global humanitarian organization. The hospital is located in an area of the city with a predominately minority Hazara Shi’ite population.
Tuesday’s violence came a day after the Afghan intelligence agency announced it had captured three key Islamic State commanders during an operation in Kabul. The suspects included the terrorist outfit’s leader for South and Far East Asia operations, said the National Directorate of Security (NDS).
Last week, NDS forces raided an IS cell in the capital, killing and capturing several militants. The spy agency claimed the men were responsible for plotting recent high-profile attacks in Kabul, including a gun-and-bomb raid on a place of worship for the minority Afghan Sikh community.
Afghanistan has lately experienced a spike in Taliban attacks and counterinsurgency operations by government forces, killing dozens of combatants on both sides.
The rise in battlefield violence threatens to derail a landmark peace-building agreement the United States signed with the Taliban in February.
The insurgent group insists it is honoring the deal by refraining from attacks on U.S.-led international forces and targets in Afghan urban centers.
Taliban fighters, however, have attacked local security forces and bases, maintaining that cessation of those attacks would be discussed when Afghan parties to the war begin peace talks proposed in the U.S.-Taliban agreement.
The intra-Afghan dialogue is supposed to start when a slowly moving prisoner swap between the Afghan government and the Taliban is concluded, with Kabul releasing up to 5,000 insurgent inmates in return for 1,000 Afghan security forces in Taliban custody.
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Tolo News: Wahid Majroh, deputy minister of public health, announced on Monday that in the past 24 hours 285 positive cases of COVID-19 had been reported in Afghanistan, bringing the total to 4,687. So far 122 people are known to have died of the coronavirus in the country. Kabul is still one of the worst hotspots for COVID-19… 
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Tolo News: Taliban’s relations with other terrorist groups “continue to be close and mutually beneficial which is against the spirit of the peace agreement the group had signed with the United States,” said the head of the National Directorate of Security (NDS), Afghanistan’s intelligence agency. “The Taliban’s leadership is still thinking of a comeback to power by military means. They do not value things like mutual tolerance and peace,” the NDS chief Ahmad Zia Saraj told Afghan senators during a briefing about the security situations of the country on Sunday. 