Suicide bomber kills at least nine in Kabul Shiite area

KABUL: A suicide bomber blew himself up in a Shiite area of Kabul on Friday, killing at least nine people, officials said, as militants dial up pressure on the war-weary Afghan capital.

The Islamic State group’s local franchise claimed responsibility for the blast, the SITE Intelligence Group said, as it seeks to stir up sectarian violence in the Sunni-majority country. It was the third suicide attack in Kabul in a fortnight. The attack happened near a high-profile gathering to mark the 23rd anniversary of the death of Abdul Ali Mazari — a prominent former leader of the mainly Shiite Hazara ethnic community who was killed by the Taliban.The event was attended by some of the country’s top politicians, including Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah and his deputy Mohammad Mohaqiq, a senior Hazara figure.

It was the first major assault targeting Shiites this year. It follows an escalation in such attacks by IS in 2017, which ended with an assault on a Shiite cultural centre in Kabul on December 28 that killed around 40 people.

“The death toll has gone up to nine,” deputy interior ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi told AFP, adding 18 others were wounded.Among the dead were two policemen, he said. The rest were civilians. Officials said the attacker was on foot.

Afghan officials gave a wide range of figures for the number of casualties: a security source told AFP 13 people were killed and more than 30 wounded.But Kabul police chief Mohammad Daud Amin told Tolo News that five people were killed and 22 others wounded.

Amin said the bomber detonated his explosive device at a checkpoint “after being identified by police”.“The bomber failed to get inside to target the gathering,” he said.Kazim Ali, who was at the gathering, told AFP the force of the explosion shattered the windows of the mosque.

“We were inside the mosque when a loud explosion took place. Security forces didn’t allow us to move afterwards,” he said.In a separate incident overnight, Taliban militants raided a number of checkpoints manned by Afghan security forces in the northern province of Takhar, Khwaja Ghar district governor Mohammad Omar told AFP.

Omar said 10 local police and seven soldiers were killed and more than a dozen wounded in the attacks claimed by the Taliban. The casualty figures could not be immediately verified.The latest attacks come as the Taliban, by far the biggest militant group in Afghanistan, face growing pressure to take up the Afghan government’s recent offer of peace talks to end a more than 16-year insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives. President Ashraf Ghani at an international conference in Kabul last week unveiled a plan to open talks with the Taliban, including eventually recognising them as a political party.In return, Ghani said the militants should officially recognise the Afghan government and constitution, a perennial sticking point in past attempts at dialogue.