Wave of attacks

As funeral services were held for victims of a suicide bombing the previous day, gunmen besieged a compound belonging to the Afghan intelligence service in Kabul.

KABuL: Gunmen besieged a compound belonging to the Afghan intelligence service in Kabul, police said, as the city’s Syiah residents held funeral services for the victims of a horrific suicide bombing the previous day that left 34 dead.

Police officer Abdul Rahman said yesterday from the location of the morning siege in a northwestern neighbourhood of Kabul that the gunmen were holed up in a partially constructed building near the compound from where they were opening fire.

The shooting – which underscored the near-daily, persistent threats in war-battered Afghanistan – was spo- radic and it was not immediately clear how many gunmen are involved in the assault.

Afghan security personnel had surrounded the building and had the situation under control, Abdul said.

Kabul’s police spokesman Hashmat Stanekzi said there were no immediate reports of casualties.

Authorities, meanwhile, revised the death toll from Wednesday’s bombing in Kabul’s neighbourhood of Dasht-e-Barchi to 34 instead of 48 previously.

Most of the victims were young men and women – high school graduates preparing for university entrance exams in the Syiah area’s educational centre – when the bomber walked into the building and blew himself up.

The city’s hospitals were overwhelmed in the immediate aftermath of the bombing as officials collected data on the casualties, leading to the confusion and wrong death toll.

The Dasht-e-Barchi area is populated by members of Afghanistan’s minority ethnic Hazaras, a Syiah community that has in the past been targeted by similar large-scale attacks such as the Wednesday bombing, which also wounded 56 people, according to Health Ministry spokesman Wahid Majroh.

No one has so far claimed responsibility for the bombing but officials blame the Islamic State group, which considers Syiahs to be heretics and frequently targets them, attacking their mosques, schools and cultural centres.

In the past two years, there have been at least 13 attacks on the Syiah community in Kabul alone.

Fifteen of the victims’ bodies were taken yesterday to a Hazara community compound in Kabul, where a mass funeral service was held.

The remaining victims would be taken to their villages to be buried there, said Gulam Hassan, the cousin of one of the victims.

The attacks come at the end of more than a week of assaults that have left scores of Afghan troops and civilians dead.

The attacks also show how militants are still able to stage large-scale attacks, even in the capital of Kabul, and undermine efforts by Afghan forces to provide security and stability on their own.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has condemned the “terrorist” attack on the Syiah centre in Kabul that “martyred and wounded the innocent” – students attending class – and ordered an investigation into the attack. — AP