The #IslamicState militant group claims they set the fatal blast on Friday in a #Shi’ite residential area in #Afghanistan, #Kabul killing 8.
Afghanistan’s capital Kabul on Friday saw a terrible tragedy with the Shi’ite residential area was attacked by a bomb explosion which took away eight lives and wounded eighteen people in the blast.
The Kabul police confirmed at least eight people were killed and 18 wounded in the blast. The militant group said in a statement that 20 people were killed and injured in the attack in western Kabul.
“The explosion happened in a crowded place,” police spokesman Khalid Zadran said. A video posted on social media of the blast site showed men running in to help the injured after the incident.
A senior Taliban security official, who declined to be named, said primary investigations revealed that explosives were placed in a vegetable cart and the blast resulted in the wounding and killing of more than 50 people, including women and children.
“There is a possibility that the death toll will increase because most of the wounded people had critical wounds,” he said.
The IS affiliate operating in Afghanistan since 2014 is seen as the country’s most severe security challenge since the Taliban took control of the country in August last year. The hardline militant group has claimed recent attacks, mainly on the minority Shi’ite community.
In October 2021, in a horrific suicide bomber attack, hundred Afghans were killed in the northern Afghanistan Shia Mosque.
The persecution of Shia Muslims by the Islamic State
The persecution of Shia Muslims by the Islamic State is the persecution of Shia Muslims by the Islamic extremist group Islamic State (IS), which took place in Iraq, Syria, and other areas across the world.
In spite of being the religious majority in Iraq, Shia Muslims have been massacred or tortured and persecuted by the Sunni IS, which is Sunni in many violent attacks. Earlier on 12 June 2014, ISIL killed 1,700 unarmed Shia Iraqi Army cadet recruits in the Camp Speicher massacre.
ISIL has also targeted Shia prisoners and witnesses said after the militant group took the city of Mosul, they divided the Sunni prisoners from the Shia prisoners. The Shia prisoners were then taken to another location and executed mercilessly.
IS also targeted Christians and Yazidis in northern Iraq on a “historic scale”, putting entire communities “at risk of being wiped off the map of Iraq”. In a special report released on 2 September 2014, Amnesty International described how ISIL had “systematically targeted non-Sunni Muslim communities, killing or abducting hundreds, possibly thousands, of individuals and forcing more than tens of thousands of Shias, Sunnis, along with other minorities to flee the areas it has captured since 10 June 2014”.
The most targeted Shia groups in Nineveh Governorate were Shia Turkmens and Shabaks.