Afghanistan first Vice President  Amrullah Saleh on Tuesday morning blamed the Taliban for the Monday attack on Kabul University which killed 19 students and wounded 22, reported Tolonews. 

Terming IS’ claim of the attack as “fake,” Saleh said the weapons shown in the hands of attackers in the photographs released by IS don’t match with what had been used by the terrorists in the attack.  

He further added, the attackers wrote “long live Taliban” on a wall of the campus. The recovery of the Taliban flag in the bag of one of the attackers points to the Taliban’s hands in the attack.

Meanwhile, the Taliban rejected the claim, and accused Saleh of “staging” the attack to defame “Taliban.” 

Putting a statement on Twitter, Zabihullah Mujahid, spokesperson of the Taliban, said, “Images published by Daesh are from their training center and weapon from their training site, but weapons used in the Kabul attack are provided by supposed ‘National Security” [NDS] which would naturally be different.” 

Earlier, US special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad asked both, the Taliban and the Afghan government not to use the attack “to score points” against each other. Khalilzad asked the Afghan parties to unite against the common enemy.  

After the attack on Monday, the Ghani government declared a day-long national mourning Tuesday.