Kabul: Two blasts and firing were heard during the swearing-in ceremony of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani at the Presidential Palace here on Monday.
The incident occurred at the time when Ghani was addressing a large gathering at the Presidential Palace during the ceremony. Ghani did not leave the stage as the incident took place.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for an attack Monday near the presidential palace in Afghanistan where rival presidential inaugurations were taking place.
"Caliphate soldiers targeted the inauguration of the tyrant Ashraf Ghani," firing 10 rockets near the presidential palace in Kabul, the jihadist group said in a statement released via its usual social media channels.
Ghani was sworn in as the Afghan President for the second term on Monday, while his Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, who too claims to have won the presidential election, held a parallel swearing-ceremony for himself.
Read also: Afghan president wins second term in preliminary vote count
Ghani was declared to have won a second term in February, nearly five months after the polls were held in September amid a record number of Taliban attacks intended to destabilise the election.
Read also: Uncertainty looms ahead of US-Taliban deal signing
The preliminary results of the September votes were announced in December. Ghani was narrowly declared the winner while Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah got 39 per cent of a total of over 1.8 million votes.
However, opposition parties immediately protested the result, threatening a full-blown political crisis on the cusp of a US peace deal with the Taliban. The Independent Election Commission (IEC) conducted the assessments of votes and announced the results in February, declaring Ghani as the winner.
With inputs from ANI
