Two days after an attack on a school in a Shiite neighborhood of Kabul, an explosion occurred on Thursday, April 20 in northern Afghanistan, a local Taliban police official said. The attack was claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group. A previous toll reported 10 dead and 15 injured.
“Soldiers of the Caliphate managed to place a package bomb in the mosque,” ISIS said in a statement on a Telegram channel. The ultra-radical Sunni group activated the bomb remotely when the mosque was packed with worshipers. Footage circulating on social media showed victims being transported to hospitals from the Seh Dokan Mosque, the floor of which was littered with broken glass.
In addition, at least four people were killed and eighteen injured when a bomb planted on a bicycle exploded in Kunduz, in the north-east of the country, when a vehicle carrying civilian mechanics working for a Taliban military unit, the local police force, was called . And in Kabul, an explosive device planted on the side of the road injured two children, the capital’s police said.
On Tuesday, at least six people were killed and 24 injured in two blasts that hit a boys’ school in a Kabul neighborhood populated mostly by members of the Shia Hazara minority.
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The Hazara community is often targeted by ISIS
The Hazara community, which represents between 10 and 20% of Afghanistan’s population (about 40 million people), has long been persecuted in this majority Sunni country. Since the Taliban seized power in August, which they themselves have attacked in the past, she has often been in the sights of IS.
The Taliban are trying to minimize the threat posed by the Islamic State organization in Khorasan (EI-K) and are waging a ruthless fight against this group, which they have been fighting for years. They multiplied the raids, particularly in the eastern province of Nangarhar, and arrested hundreds of men accused of involvement. They now claim to have defeated EI-K, but analysts believe the extremist group is still the biggest security challenge for the new Afghan power.
This group has been accused of carrying out or being responsible for some of the deadliest attacks in Afghanistan in recent years. In May 2021, a series of blasts occurred outside a school for girls in the same Shia district of Kabul as Tuesday, killing 85 people, most of them high school girls, and injuring more than 300.
First a car bomb went off in front of the school, then two more bombs followed as the students rushed outside. IS, which claimed responsibility for an October 2020 attack on an education center (24 dead) in the same area, is strongly suspected of having carried out this attack.
In the same neighborhood in May 2020, a group of armed men attacked a maternity hospital supported by MSF, killing twenty-five people, including sixteen mothers, some about to give birth. This attack had not been alleged, but the United States had accused ISIS of being responsible.
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