A teenaged bomber on Thursday targeted a Kabul auditorium packed with people watching a drama condemning suicide attacks and being staged at a French cultural center, killing a German man and wounding 16 people, officials and a witness said, reports Reuters.
The suicide blast was the second to strike the Afghan capital in a day, after six Afghan soldiers perished when their bus was hit on the outskirts of the city as they rode into work.
The violence, part of a nationwide campaign by Islamist Taliban insurgents to strike at military and civilian targets, came less than three weeks before the year-end deadline for most foreign combat soldiers to withdraw from the country.
General Ayoub Salangi, head of the interior ministry while the cabinet is being finalised, said the suspected theater bomber appeared to have been about 17 years old and detonated his explosives at the venue during an early evening performance.
"I heard a deafening explosion ... There were Afghans, foreigners, young girls and young boys watching the show," Sher Ahmad, an Afghan rights activist who was at the performance, told Reuters.
He said the blast came during a performance of a new play called "Heartbeat: Silence After the Explosion", a condemnation of suicide attacks.