Thousands of people attended the funeral of Taliban minister Khalil Haqqani on the event date of December 12, 2024, after he was killed the previous day in a suicide bombing at his ministry in Kabul.
The AP report says Haqqani, the minister for refugees and repatriation, died in Wednesday’s blast along with five others, making him the highest-profile casualty of an assault in Afghanistan since the Taliban seized power three years earlier. The Islamic State Khorasan Province claimed responsibility through the Amaq News Agency, saying one of its fighters carried out the attack after waiting for Haqqani to leave his office. That claim is central to the source because it links the killing to the Islamic State’s regional branch rather than to a rival Taliban faction or a general security breach.
The funeral itself became a major political event. It was held in eastern Paktia province, where tight security was in place and armed men guarded the coffin draped in the Taliban flag. Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, Deputy Prime Minister Maulvi Abdul Kabir and acting interior minister Sirajuddin Haqqani all attended, and Sirajuddin led the mourners in prayer. The crowd gathered on a vast plain against a mountainous backdrop, with loudspeakers broadcasting sermons and eulogies. That scene shows that Haqqani’s death was being treated not just as a personal loss but as a public moment for the Taliban leadership.
The source also notes the family and political connections around the dead minister. Khalil Haqqani was the uncle of Sirajuddin Haqqani, who leads a powerful faction within the Taliban and has a US bounty on his head. That relationship gives the bombing added significance because it hit someone embedded in the movement’s top circles rather than an obscure bureaucrat. The AP report says the US had placed bounties on both men, underlining the international profile of the family.
The attack was not just a battlefield death. According to an official from Paktia, the assailant got past a body scanner by claiming he had metal plates in his hands and telling the guard he was a refugee. The official said Haqqani was approaching the ministry after praying in the compound mosque when the bomber detonated. Those details matter because they show the attack was not random violence at the gate. It involved a social disguise and access to a ministry compound, which would normally be considered a secure site.
The source also says the U.N. mission in Afghanistan condemned the bombing and said there could be no place for terrorism in the search for stability. Pakistan also expressed shock and said it stood in solidarity with Afghanistan. Those reactions show the political reverberations beyond the Taliban circle. The killing of a cabinet member by Islamic State militants is not just an internal Afghan security issue; it also touches regional diplomacy and the wider question of whether the Taliban can protect even its own senior figures.
The report provides no final account of the bomb’s construction or of how the attacker entered the compound beyond the scanner ruse. What it does establish is clear enough: a Taliban minister was killed in a ministry bombing, the Islamic State’s Afghan branch claimed it, and thousands gathered for a funeral that mixed grief, security theater and political messaging.
