By Abubakar Siddique
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
February 13, 2025
A suicide bombing attack on the Taliban-led Ministry for Urban Development office in the Afghan capital, Kabul, has killed two people and injured three more.
Taliban authorities said the attacker was one of the people killed in the February 13 attack.
“The suicide bomber was identified and eliminated at the entrance of the ministry,” said Mohammad Kamal Afghan, a spokesman for the Taliban’s Urban Development Ministry.
He told journalists that the attack happened just before noon local time.
No group has immediately accepted responsibility for the attack.
But the Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K), an ultraradical rival of the Taliban, claimed credit for a separate attack earlier this week.
On February 11, at least eight people were killed in a suicide bank outside a bank in the northern city of Kunduz. IS-K said it targeted the Taliban government employees while they collected their salaries.
Earlier on December 11, an IS-K suicide bomber killed Khalil ur-Rahman Haqqani, the Taliban’s refugee minister. Five more people were killed in the attack inside the Refugee Ministry compound in Kabul.
Haqqani, in his 60s, was the most senior Taliban figure killed by IS-K since the Taliban seized power in August 2021.
IS-K has repeatedly targeted Afghanistan’s Shi’ite minority and followers of the moderate Sufi orders.
In recent years, the group has embarked on terror attacks internationally. Last year, it claimed credit for attacks in Iran and Russia. Individuals linked to the group have also been detained in the United States and Europe.
On February 10, a meeting of the UN Security Council declared the group a significant threat to global security.
“We remain concerned about IS-K’s capabilities to plot and conduct attacks as well as sustain recruitment campaigns, particularly in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” said Dorothy Shea, the interim U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
The Taliban promised security after returning to power three years ago but has not been able to stamp out attacks by the IS-K. It launched a brutal crackdown against the IS-K and claimed to have killed or detained hundreds of its members.
Afghanistan’s tiny Salafist minority, however, has complained of being on the receiving end of the Taliban clampdown on IS-K as its members were unjustly persecuted.
In 2015, the IS-K emerged as the local branch of the Islamic State, which ruled vast swathes of territories in Syria and Iraq.
With reporting by RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi, VOA, Reuters, and AFP
Copyright (c) 2025. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.
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