An injured soldier recovers in a hospital after Friday’s attack at a military compound in Mazar-e-Sharif province north of Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, April 22, 2017. Gunmen wearing army uniforms stormed a military compound in the Balkh province, killing at least eight soldiers and wounding 11 others, an Afghan government official said Friday. (Photo from AP)
KABUL, Afghanistan — Gunmen and suicide bombers wearing army uniforms stormed a military compound in the Balkh province, killing or wounding more than 100 army personnel, Afghan officials said Saturday.
Gen. Daulat Waziri, spokesman for the Afghanistan Ministry of Defense, said the attack a day earlier on a compound of the 209th Corps of the Afghan National Army left dozens of soldiers and other personnel dead or wounded.
Gen. Mohammad Radmanish, deputy spokesman for the Defense Ministry, said the militants entered the base using two military vehicles and attacked army personnel inside the compound’s mosque.
“Two suicide bombers detonated their vests full of explosive inside the mosque of the army corps while everyone was busy with Friday prayers,” he said.
Waziri said there were 10 attackers, including the two who carried out the suicide attacks. Eight others were killed in a gun battle with soldiers.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the assault in an email sent to media.
President Ashraf Ghani on Saturday traveled to the base and strongly condemned the attack, according to a tweet from the official Twitter account of the presidential palace.
“The attackers are infidels,” Ghani was quoted as saying in the tweet.
Reports conflicted on the death toll, but a source within the army corps who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with the media, said more than 130 were killed and around 80 others were wounded.
In March, an attack on a military hospital in the capital Kabul killed 50 people. Responsibility for that attack was claimed by the Islamic State group. According to officials, five attackers were involved, including one suicide bomber who detonated an explosives belt and four gunmen who stormed the building.
The 209th corps is located in the Dihdadi district of Balkh. It is one of seven corps of the country’s Ministry of Defense, which is responsible for providing security for Afghanistan’s northern and northeastern provinces.