A group of gunmen attacked a Sikh temple in Kabul, the Afghan capital, with grenades on Saturday morning, injuring at least two people, according to witnesses and the Interior Ministry.
“I heard shots and explosions coming from the (Sikh temple),” Gurnam Singh, a leader of the Sikh community in Kabul, told AFP.
Two members of the Sikh community were injured in the explosion of a grenade thrown by the attackers, according to Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul Nafi Takor.
A fire broke out after the attack, which took place around 6:30 a.m. (3 a.m. GMT).
A few minutes later, a car bomb exploded near the temple, causing no casualties, the spokesman added.
“Generally around this time of the morning, several Sikh worshipers come to the temple for prayer,” said Gurnam Singh, who said there could be more than two injured.
About 200 Sikhs live in Afghanistan – an almost exclusively Muslim country – compared to about half a million in the 1970s.
In recent years, the Afghan Sikh community has been the target of several attacks.
The deadliest occurred in March 2020, when gunmen stormed a temple in Kabul, killing at least 25 people.
The Islamic State jihadist group claimed responsibility for the attack.
IS had already targeted this minority in July 2018 in a suicide attack in Jalalabad in the east of the country, killing 19 people.
Forty years of war, poverty and discrimination have caused the exodus of the Afghan Sikh community.
After the Taliban seized power in Kabul last August, nearly a hundred went into exile.
The number of attacks, often targeting religious minorities, has decreased in the country since the arrival of the Taliban.
But a series of bombings that killed dozens of people hit the country in late April, during the month of Ramadan, and then in late May.
Most were claimed by IS.
Attempting to downplay the threat posed by Islamic State-Khorasan (ISIS-K), the regional arm of ISIS, the Taliban are waging a ruthless fight against the group they have been fighting for years.
They multiplied the raids, particularly in the eastern province of Nangarhar, arresting hundreds of men accused of involvement.
They have claimed for several months to have defeated EI-K, but analysts believe the extremist group still poses the biggest security challenge for the new Afghan power.