(Kabul) The Islamic State (IS) group has claimed responsibility for the two bomb attacks against two minibuses which killed at least nine people on Thursday in Mazar-i-Sharif, a week after a deadly attack against a Shiite mosque in this city of northern Afghanistan.
Posted yesterday at 3:15 p.m.
“The targets appear to be Shiite passengers,” Balkh provincial police spokesman Asif Waziri told AFP, adding that 13 people were injured in the blasts.
The two blasts occurred within minutes of each other in different parts of the city as workers returned home to break the Ramadan fast, Waziri said.
“The enemies of Afghanistan are creating tensions and divisions among our people,” he added.
Footage circulating on social media showed one of the minibuses in flames, while Taliban extricate victims from the other vehicle to transport them to hospitals.
The blasts came a week after a bomb attack on a Shiite mosque in Mazar-i-Sharif killed at least 12 worshipers and injured 58.
Since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August after overthrowing US-backed authorities there, the number of bombings has declined, but jihadists and IS have continued their attacks on targets they deem heretical.
Another bomb attack hit a Sufi minority mosque on April 22 during Friday prayers in Kunduz in northern Afghanistan, killing at least 36 people, including children.
A few days earlier, explosions in a boys’ school in a Shiite district of Kabul had killed six people.
Shiite Afghans, mostly from the Hazara community that makes up between 10 and 20 percent of Afghanistan’s 38 million people, have long been targets of the Islamic State (IS).
Taliban officials insist their forces have defeated the Islamic State group, but analysts believe the jihadist organization still poses a major security threat to Afghanistan.
Afghan government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told AFP on Thursday that several arrests had been made in connection with the recent attacks.
“These attacks targeted places that were not sufficiently secure, such as mosques and a school, but now we have reinforced security in such places,” he added.