Summary:
- Bomb blast in Kabul minibus kills 2 civilians; 14 injured. Taliban-led police investigate, suspect IS-K; no immediate claim. Dasht-e-Barchi faces recurrent attacks, mostly claimed by IS-K. Taliban claims 90% decrease in IS-K attacks; US intercepts link IS-K to Iran bombings, but Taliban disputes. IS-K remains a viable terrorist threat, according to US National Security Council.
ISLAMABAD — A bomb blast ripped through a minibus in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, Saturday evening, killing at least two civilians and wounding 14 others.
The attack occurred in the city’s western Dasht-e-Barchi Shiite Muslim neighborhood.
Khalid Zadran, a spokesperson for the Taliban-led Kabul police, confirmed the casualties, saying the injured were rushed to hospitals and the bombing was under investigation.
No group immediately took credit for the deadly attack, but suspicions fell on a regional Islamic State affiliate known as Islamic State-Khorasan, or IS-K.
Dasht-e-Barchi has experienced persistent deadly militant bombings, targeting Shiite mosques, schools and hospitals. IS-K has claimed credit for almost all recent attacks.
The group has carried out high-profile attacks in Afghanistan since the Taliban regained control of the country more than two years ago. The violence has killed hundreds of people, including Shiite Afghans and Taliban members.
Taliban Defense Minister Mohammad Yaqoob told a televised news conference last week that there had been a 90% decrease in IS-K attacks in the past year, attributing it to his government’s counterterrorism operations.
Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban government spokesperson, reiterated Saturday that the crackdown on IS-K had degraded its ability to harm Afghanistan and other countries.
He spoke to local media a day after Reuters news agency reported that “communications intercepts collected by the United States” confirmed that IS-K conducted Wednesday’s twin suicide bombings in neighboring Iran that killed nearly 100 people.
The Sunni-based Islamic State claimed responsibility for the bloodshed in the southeastern Iranian city of Kerman but did not specify that its Afghanistan-based affiliate carried it out.
The United States has consistently described IS-K as a dangerous entity.
However, John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesperson, said Thursday it was “difficult to make a quantitative or qualitative assessment” of IS-K’s strength based on a single event like this week’s attack in Iran.
“ISIS-K does remain a viable terrorist threat. Certainly, they are largely based out of Afghanistan. That’s where they headquarter themselves,” Kirby told a news conference in Washington, using a different acronym for IS-K. “And they continue to pose a viable terrorist threat to the people of Afghanistan and obviously to the region.”
