8-ton bomb defused in Kabul

According to the Afghan National Security Department, a bomb with eight tons of explosives has been defused by security officers in Kabul. Reconnaissance units have discovered the bomb, ready to go off, in a truck, parked in the east of the capital city.
When the security service officers started defusing the explosive device, they came under fire. Five militants of one of the most dangerous and influential Afghan Taliban groups, the Haqqani Group, were killed in the shootout.

If the bomb had gone off, it would have wiped out anything within a radius of 1.5 kilometres, said a security service official, Shafikulla Tahiri. The bomb was detected on Wednesday; two days after the US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel had ended his visit to Afghanistan.