KABUL: Six civilians were killed and scores wounded in a suicide attack near Afghanistan’s foreign ministry on Monday, the interior ministry said.
Security has improved dramatically since the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, ousting a US-backed government and ending their two-decade insurgency, but ISIS remains a growing threat. .
Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul Nafi Thakur tweeted that the attacker was identified by Afghan forces who fired at him in front of a business center near the Foreign Ministry.
“Along with his death, an explosive device planted by the attacker also exploded killing six civilians and injuring several others,” he said.
The Italian NGO Emergency, which runs a hospital in the capital, confirmed that two people, including a child, were killed and 12 injured.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Monday’s blast was the second attack near the foreign ministry in Kabul in less than three months, and the first in Afghanistan since the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan on Thursday.
On January 11, a suicide bomber blew himself up near the Foreign Ministry, killing 10 people and injuring 53, according to the United Nations.
Taliban officials, who have often tried to downplay the attacks by challenging their rule, said five people were killed in the attack, which Daesh claimed responsibility for.
The group has quickly become a major challenge, killing and injuring hundreds of people in several attacks, some targeting foreigners or foreign interests to undermine the Taliban government.
At least five Chinese nationals were injured in December when gunmen stormed a hotel popular with business people in Kabul.
ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack, as did an attack on the Pakistani embassy in Kabul in December that Islamabad condemned as an “assassination attempt” against its ambassador.
Two Russian embassy staff members were killed in September in a suicide bombing outside their mission that ISIS claimed responsibility for.
The Taliban and ISIS share a hardline ideology, but the latter is fighting to establish a global “caliphate” rather than the Taliban’s more ulterior goal of ruling an independent Afghanistan.
