Kabul Chinese restaurant bombing kills seven, including one Chinese national

# Kabul Chinese restaurant bombing kills seven, including one Chinese national

Event date: 2026-01-19.

A bombing at a Chinese-run restaurant in Kabul's Shahr-e Naw district killed seven people and wounded others, including one Chinese national, according to the supplied report. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack.

The account in Headline Daily said the restaurant was in one of Kabul's better-known commercial areas, near office buildings, shopping centers and embassies. That location made the blast especially visible: a place that people might associate with relative safety, not with a mass-casualty attack.

The report said one Chinese citizen and six Afghans were killed. It also said another Chinese national was seriously injured. Emergency workers and hospital staff were among the first to see the scale of the toll. The humanitarian organization EMERGENCY said its hospitals received 20 wounded people, including four women and one child, and that seven arrived with no signs of life.

Local police said the restaurant was a Chinese noodle shop run by Abdul Majid, a Chinese Muslim, together with his wife and an Afghan partner, serving a local Chinese Muslim community. The blast occurred near the kitchen, and the force of the explosion punched a hole through the front of the building. The street was left with smoke and debris.

The scene quickly became a security zone. The report said Kabul authorities sealed off the area for cleanup and evidence collection, then later partially lifted the cordon. Armed security personnel kept journalists and bystanders away from the immediate site. That is typical of a bombing investigation, but it also means some of the early public reporting came from controlled access rather than a fully open scene.

China's embassy in Afghanistan issued a safety advisory after the attack, warning Chinese nationals not to travel to the country for the time being. The notice also urged Chinese citizens and companies already in Afghanistan to follow local laws, respect religious customs, monitor the security situation closely and reduce visits to crowded places such as restaurants, mosques, large stores and markets.

What can be verified from the packet is the outline of the event: an attack in a commercial Kabul district, multiple dead and injured, an Islamic State claim, and a rapid consular warning from China. What cannot be verified from the packet is the exact device used, the broader operational chain, or the final casualty count after all medical treatment was complete. Those details are left out here on purpose.

Even with those limits, the incident is stark. It combined a high-profile target, foreign nationals among the victims, and a claim from a transnational militant group. For Kabul residents and foreign missions alike, the message was immediate: the threat remains active in spaces that are meant to be ordinary, open and public.