On March 27, a suicide bomber in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, detonated himself close to the Foreign Ministry, leaving at least six people dead and 12 more injured.
Security personnel noticed the bomber and fired at him, according to Khalid Zadran, a spokesman for the Taliban’s security command in Kabul, but they were unable to stop him from making it to a checkpoint in Malik Asghar Square, where he detonated his explosive vest.
A kid and 12 injured patients, including two who were already dead upon arrival, were admitted to a Kabul hospital run by the Italian Charity Emergency, according to a tweet from the facility.
Although no group has yet claimed credit for the incident, the Taliban have been targeted by Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K), an extremist organisation that has emerged as the Taliban’s major competitor in the country’s war-torn region, after taking back power in 2021.
IS-K has recently staged a number of strikes in Afghanistan.
At least 10 people were killed on January 11 when an IS-K suicide bomber detonated himself close to the Foreign Ministry, not far from the scene of the incident on March 27.
As many as 20 people were murdered in an explosion on January 1 near a checkpoint at the military airport in Kabul, and in an attack on a businessmen-favored hotel in Kabul in December, both of which were claimed by IS-K. In the hotel incident in December, at least five people of Chinese descent suffered injuries.
Two staffers of the Russian Embassy in Kabul were killed in a suicide IS-K attack in September.
In response to the strikes, the Taliban has increased its raids on locations thought to be IS-K hideouts.
In two separate raids in Kabul last month, the Taliban security forces claimed to have killed two senior IS-K members, Ijaz Amin Ahingar and Qari Fateh, the regional IS-K intelligence and operations chief.
