One member of the Sikh community was killed and seven others were injured in the attack, according to a Taliban spokesman.
The Islamic State (IS) jihadist group has claimed responsibility for an attack on a Sikh shrine on Saturday that killed at least two people and injured seven others, according to authorities. minorities, especially in places of worship.
Through the Telegram platform, the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Khorasan (IKH) reported that the attack was in retaliation for the insults against the Prophet Muhammad, citing recent statements by a representative of the ruling party in India, who opposed many Muslim countries.
India’s Federal Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Twitter that the attack “shocked” him.
One member of the Sikh community was killed and seven others were injured when a car bomb exploded at an Iraqi police recruiting center at Kisak, west of Baghdad, according to the Taliban.
At around 06:30 (local time; 06:00 Greek time), gunmen stormed the church in the western part of the city, hurling a “grenade at the guard”, a ministry spokesman said. One member of the Sikh community was killed and seven others were injured, spokesman Abdul Nafi Takor said.
Taliban fighters intervened and killed the two attackers, while losing one of their own, according to him.
Minutes after the attack, a car bomb had exploded near the temple, causing no casualties, according to Abdul Nafi Takor.
The believer who was killed lived in the temple, as did other members of the community. “He took a shower, the assailants heard him and killed him by shooting him twice,” said a person close to him.
According to the Taliban, several worshipers managed to escape through the back door.
After the attack, a fire broke out in the area. Videos uploaded to social networking sites immortalized a dense column of smoke rising from the temple as shots were heard.
The ceiling and walls in the prayer hall were partially burned. Signs of bullets and traces of blood could be seen, found journalists of the French Agency who toured the area. Windows of houses were broken by the explosion of the car, they also found.
Other Sikh temples in Kabul have been closed for security reasons.
India’s Foreign Minister S. Jaisankar condemned the “cowardly attack” via Twitter. It came just days after an Indian delegation visited Kabul for talks with the Taliban regime on Delhi’s humanitarian aid to Afghanistan and the possibility of reopening the Indian embassy.
New Delhi, which had close ties to the previous US-backed Afghan government, closed its embassy in Kabul when the Taliban regained power on August 15.
In Afghanistan, a country with an almost Muslim majority, there are about 200 Sikhs left, out of a minority of half a million in the 1970s.
In recent years, the Afghan Sikh community has been the target of several attacks. The deadliest attack took place in March 2020, when gunmen stormed a temple in Kabul and killed at least 25 people. The IK had taken responsibility for that attack as well.
The same jihadist organization had targeted the Sikh minority again in July 2018, when a suicide bomber struck in Jalalabad (east) with 19 dead.
Forty years of war, poverty and discrimination have led to mass exodus of members of the Afghan Sikh community. After the fundamentalist Sunnis seized power last August, about a hundred others left.
The Pakistani government condemned the move yesterday, expressing “grave concern about the recent escalation of terrorist attacks on places of worship in Afghanistan” and UNAMA, the UN mission in Afghanistan, stressing that the country’s minorities must be protected.
At least one person was killed and seven others were injured in a bomb blast near a Shi’ite shrine in northeastern Afghanistan during prayers on Friday, authorities said.
The number of attacks in the country has decreased since the Taliban came to power, but a series of deadly bombings, with dozens killed, hit the country in late April – during the holy month of Ramadan – and then in late May.
The IK took responsibility for most of them. They mainly targeted the Shiite community.
The Taliban downplay the threat posed by the local IK arm. They have been waging a ruthless war against this organization for years.
They multiplied the attacks, especially in the eastern province of Nangarhar, and arrested hundreds of men who allegedly belonged to his ranks.
They have been claiming for months that they “defeated” the IKH, but analysts continue to characterize the extremist organization as the most important security challenge for the new regime in Afghanistan.
