Suicide bomber kills 41 in Kabul
Growing reach of Islamic State seen across Afghanistan
KABUL, Afghanistan — An Islamic State suicide bomber struck a Shiite cultural center in Kabul on Thursday, killing at least 41 people and underscoring the extremist group’s growing reach in Afghanistan even as its self-styled caliphate in Iraq and Syria has been dismantled.
The attack may have targeted the pro-iran Afghan Voice news agency housed in the two-story building. The Sunni extremists of IS view Shiite Muslims as apostates and have repeatedly attacked Afghanistan’s Shiite minority and targets linked to neighboring Iran.
The attack wounded more than 80 people, many of whom suffered severe burns.
Local Shiite leader Abdul Hussain Ramazandada said the bomber slipped into an academic seminar at the center and blew himself up among the participants. More bombs went off just outside the center as people fled.
The Is-linked Aamaq news agency said four bombs were used in the assault, one strapped to the suicide attacker. It said the center was funded by Iran and used to propagate Shiite beliefs.
Ali Reza Ahmadi, a journalist with Afghan Voice, said he leaped from the window of his second-floor office after the first bomb went off and saw flames pouring from the basement.
“I jumped from the roof toward the basement, yelling at people to get water to put out the fire,” he said.
At nearby Istiqlal Hospital, Director Mohammed Sabir Nasib said the emergency room was overwhelmed. Additional doctors and nurses were called in to help. At the height of the crisis, more than 50 medics were working to save the wounded.
By late afternoon, Health Ministry spokesman Wahid Mujro said 41 people were dead and 84 others wounded.
The cultural center was housed in a simple building surrounded by mud-brick homes in the Shiite-dominated neighborhood of Dasht-eBarchi, home to some of Kabul’s poorest residents.
Pakistan, which Afghan and
U.S. officials have long accused of harboring militants, condemned the “dastardly” attack in Kabul and vowed to stand with Afghanistan in its fight against terrorism. Pakistan has denied that it shelters militants and has in turn accused Afghanistan of failing to crack down on extremist groups.
Afghan forces have struggled to combat both the Taliban and IS since U.S. and international forces officially concluded their combat mission at the end of 2014 and shifted to a support and counterterrorism role more than a decade after the American-led invasion that toppled the Taliban.
President Donald Trump has ordered an additional 3,800 U.S. troops to Afghanistan since announcing a new strategy in August aimed at ending America’s longest war, bringing the total U.S. forces there to at least 15,000.