The death toll from a powerful Taliban truck bombing at the German consulate in Afghanistan’s Mazar-i-Sharif city rose to at least six Friday, with more than 100 others wounded in a major militant assault.

The Taliban said the bombing late Thursday, which tore a massive crater in the road and overturned cars, was a “revenge attack” for US air strikes this month in the volatile province of Kunduz that left 32 civilians dead.

The explosion, followed by sporadic gunfire, reverberated across the usually tranquil northern city, smashing windows of nearby shops and leaving terrified local residents fleeing for cover.

“The suicide attacker rammed his explosives-laden car into the wall of the German consulate,” local police chief Sayed Kamal Sadat told AFP.

All German staff from the consulate were unharmed, according to the foreign ministry in Berlin.

But six Afghan civilians were killed, including two motorcyclists who were shot dead by German forces close to the consulate after they refused to heed their warning to stop, said deputy police chief Abdul Razaq Qadri.

A suspect had also been detained near the diplomatic mission on Friday morning, Qadri added.

Local doctor Noor Mohammad Fayez said the city hospitals received six dead bodies, including two killed by bullets.

At least 128 others were wounded, some of them critically and many with shrapnel injuries, he added.

“The consulate building has been heavily damaged,” the German foreign ministry said in a statement. “Our sympathies go out to the Afghan injured and their families.”

A diplomatic source in Berlin said Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier had convened a crisis meeting.

Source: AFP