Islamic State militants killed 14 people and wounded six others in central Afghanistan in one of the deadliest attacks in the country this year, according to AP reporting and Taliban officials.
The attack took place on Thursday and targeted a group of minority Hazaras traveling between the provinces of Ghor and Daikundi. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility before Taliban authorities in Kabul publicly acknowledged the shooting. The militant group said its fighters used a machine gun and claimed a higher death toll than the Taliban later reported.
The dead were part of Afghanistan’s Shiite Hazara community, which has repeatedly been targeted by the Islamic State’s local affiliate over the past three years. The AP report described the group as a major rival to the Taliban that has attacked schools, hospitals, mosques and Shiite areas as it seeks to undermine the ruling authorities.
By Friday, mourners in the village of Bandar in Daikundi province had gathered around rows of bodies covered in colorful cloth. A relative of one victim told AP that families feared for their safety not only on highways but in cities and schools as well. The attack, he said, should have been prevented.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid condemned the killings as a barbaric act and said authorities would search for the perpetrators and bring them to justice. The United Nations mission in Afghanistan expressed condolences and called for an investigation. Iranian officials also reacted, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani quoted as saying the gunmen had targeted people returning from shrine visits in Iraq.
The shooting adds to a grim pattern of violence that has kept Afghanistan’s Shiite communities under threat even after the Taliban takeover. The AP report noted that earlier in the month an IS suicide bomber struck a prosecutor’s office in Kabul, and that a booby-trapped motorcycle in Badakhshan province killed police officers in May.
The scale of the attack, and the fact that the Islamic State claimed it before the Taliban acknowledged it, again highlighted the propaganda race between the two sides. For the militants, such attacks remain a way to demonstrate reach. For Afghan authorities, each strike is a reminder that they have not fully secured roads, religious communities or urban centers from extremist violence.
The AP account said the deadliness of the attack made it one of the worst in Afghanistan this year. In a country where security remains uneven and minority communities continue to fear targeted violence, the shooting between Ghor and Daikundi was another stark example of how vulnerable civilian travelers remain on rural roads.
