Suicide bombing kills six in Kabul
The Spokesperson for Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry, Khalid Zadran, disclosed on 27 March that six civilians were killed in Kabul in front of the Taliban administration’s Foreign Ministry in a suicide bombing.
The Taliban has yet to comment on the attack, with local reports indicating that no group has taken responsibility as of now.
Eyewitnesses say the attack left a heavy explosion near the city’s Daudzai Trade Center in Kabul’s downtown area. Kabul’s Surgical Center reported receiving 12 injured patients following the attack, including a child.
Several accounts on Twitter have posted photographs of the aftermath of the suicide attack.
The militant group ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K) has carried out tens of attacks on populated areas in Afghanistan, ever since the Taliban consolidated power in Kabul in August 2021 following the withdrawal of US troops.
According to the US National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), ISIS and other extremist groups have maintained “an active presence” consisting of about 2,000 to 3,000 militants in Afghanistan. In January this year, US intelligence warned of a significant expansion of the ISIS-K network in the country.
On 20 March, the Taliban government claimed its security forces launched “a crushing operation” against ISIS-K hideouts inside of the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif, reportedly killing five members of the militant group, who were said to be Tajik and Uzbek nationals. The provincial police of the Balkh district told Pajhwok Afghan News that three ISIS-K holdouts were destroyed.
This reveal came a day after Iran’s Press TV reported that according to Kabulov, the US has been reaching out to the Taliban’s opposition groups, such as ISIS-K, and secretly giving them money, as US planners “want to avenge their shameful military-political defeat in Afghanistan, and in retaliation, they do everything so that peace isn’t established in this troubled land.”
Meanwhile, the government of US President Joe Biden is still in the process of deciding whether to return half of Afghanistan’s foreign reserves, despite the war-torn country undergoing one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
