ISIL claims responsibility for deadly Kabul attack

The group said the blast targeted the Taliban’s prosecution service to ‘avenge Muslims’ held in its prisons.

The ISIS (ISIL) group has claimed responsibility for a deadly suicide bombing in Kabul that killed at least six people.

In a Telegram post on Tuesday, ISIL said one of its members detonated an explosive vest in the Afghan capital the previous day, targeting the Taliban government’s prosecution service.

The bomber waited until government employees finished their shifts and then detonated the explosive in the middle of a crowd, the post said.

Thirteen people were wounded in the attack in Kabul’s southern Qala-e-Bakhtiar area, according to Kabul police spokesman Khalid Zadran.

ISIL, which put the casualties at “more than 45”, said the attack was revenge for “Muslims held in Taliban prisons”.

While overall violence has waned in Afghanistan since the Taliban’s 2021 takeover, ISIL’s affiliate in the Khorasan region – Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP) – remains active, regularly targeting civilians, foreigners and Taliban officials with gun and bomb attacks.

The last suicide attack in Afghanistan claimed by the regional chapter of ISIL was in the southern city of Kandahar – the Taliban’s historic stronghold – in March. That bombing, striking a group of people waiting outside a bank branch, killed more than 20 bystanders.

In 2022, an ISIL-linked suicide bombing killed 53 people, including 46 girls and young women, at an education centre in a Shia neighbourhood of Kabul.

Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told the AFP news agency last month that ISIL “existed” in the country before but the Taliban “suppressed them very hard”.

“No such groups exist here that can pose a threat to anyone,” Mujahid said.