(Kabul) The jihadist group Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility on Friday evening for a bomb attack which, according to a revised report, left four dead and seven injured the day before in a shopping center in the Afghan capital Kabul.
“IS fighters managed to introduce a parcel bomb into a room where Shiites were gathering,” the Sunni organization said in a statement.
The explosion occurred in Dasht-e-Barchi, a neighborhood mainly populated by the Hazara Shiite community, according to Kabul police spokesperson Khalid Zadran.
Mr. Zadran reported four dead and seven injured in a message sent to the press on Friday afternoon, revising the initial toll of two dead and nine injured. An investigation is underway, he said.
Taliban authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the IS claim.
The explosion devastated a sports club located several floors higher in the shopping center, blowing out all the partitions in the space, shattering windows and causing damage throughout the block, journalists from the AFP.
An employee of the club, which organizes combat sports training, told AFP that the explosion occurred at the end of a busy boxing session, which is usually attended by around thirty people.
PHOTO WAKIL KOHSAR, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
AFP journalists saw several punching bags on the floor of the club, others still hanging and marked by fragments of the explosion.
“The explosion was extraordinarily strong. The walls fell, metal doors, glass and windows were broken,” said Sultan Ali Amiri, 26, who was not in the club at the time of the explosion.
AFP journalists saw several punching bags on the floor of the club, others still hanging and marked by fragments of the explosion.
Regular attacks
Images posted on social media show the sides of part of a multi-storey building blown away.
Afghanistan’s Shiite Hazara community is regularly the subject of attacks in this predominantly Sunni Muslim country.
Hazaras have been persecuted for decades, targeted by the Taliban during their insurgency against the former US-backed government, as well as by ISIS.
The Afghan Taliban authorities claim to have security in the country under control, but dozens of attacks targeting civilians have been carried out over the past two years. Most have been claimed by ISIS-K, the local chapter of the Islamic State group.
Hundreds of people have been killed or injured in these attacks, mainly targeting Shiite, Sufi and Sikh religious minorities, foreigners or foreign interests, and the Taliban themselves.
The presence of IS fighters in Afghanistan is also raising tensions with neighboring Pakistan, which says the jihadists are crossing the border to strike targets on its territory.