Two attacks have shaken Afghanistan this morning, leaving behind more than two dozen victims. The most bloodthirsty bomb exploded early in the morning in Mazar-i-Sharif, in the north of the country, as a bus of officials from a public gas and oil company passed by.
The second, after noon, has sown the Jalalabad exchange market, in eastern Afghanistan, with injuries. Both detonations, not claimed, undermine the feeling of improved security after the return of the Taliban to Kabul two summers ago.
The explosion in Mazar-i-Sharif, a city with a mixed population and traditionally hostile to the Taliban, has killed at least nine passengers and injured eight others. Last spring, the capital of Balkh, neighboring Uzbekistan, registered three almost simultaneous fatal explosions in as many minibuses.
The attack in Jalalabad, a city near Pakistan, has caused nine injuries among money changers and market customers. In the case of two sectors related to currency operations, a mafia angle cannot be ruled out.
The last serious attack occurred on November 30, when nineteen students and teachers from a Koranic school were assassinated in Aybak, in the north of the country. Many of the worst massacres in recent years have been claimed by an alleged Islamic State in Khorasan, with obscure origins and objectives.
Today's attacks come a week after the changing of the guard at Pakistan's military and intelligence headquarters, which in turn has great ascendancy over the Taliban leadership in Kabul.
