ISLAMABAD: Gunmen killed 14 people in a Shiite-majority area in central Afghanistan, the Taliban said Friday, in one of the deadliest attacks in the country this year. Six other people were wounded in the assault.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility before the Taliban acknowledged the shootings, which took place Thursday and targeted Hazara Shiite people as they traveled between the provinces of Ghor and Daikundi.
A machine gun was used in the assault, the IS group said. It gave a higher death toll than the Taliban.
The Iranian news agency IRNA quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani as saying the group had targeted people welcoming Afghan Shiites who were returning from visiting shrines in Iraq. He called for immediate action to punish those behind the crime.
The IS group’s affiliate in the country, a major rival to the Taliban, has challenged authorities’ grip on domestic security by attacking schools, hospitals, mosques and Shiite areas in the past three years.
The Taliban’s chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid strongly condemned Thursday’s “barbaric action” and said authorities considered it their obligation to protect people and their property.
“We are also making serious efforts to search for the perpetrators and bring them to justice,” Mujahid added.
The UN mission in Afghanistan said the attack resulted in numerous deaths and injuries to members of the Shiite community. “We express our condolences to the families of those killed and call for an investigation to hold those responsible to account,” the mission said on X.
Earlier this month, an IS suicide bomber detonated his explosive-laden vest at a prosecutor’s office in the capital Kabul. In May, a booby-trapped motorcycle exploded in northeastern Badakhshan province and killed police officers who were part of an anti-poppy cultivation campaign.
A UN-appointed rights expert for Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, said he was alarmed by the spate of IS-claimed attacks.
The “appalling killings” of Shiite Hazara bore the hallmarks of international crimes, said Bennett, whom the Taliban have barred from Afghanistan.