Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Carnage in Kabul
Afghan security troops stand guard Thursday at the site of a suicide bombing at a Shiite cultural center in Kabul that killed dozens of people and wounded dozens more. It was the latest in a series of deadly attacks on Shiite targets claimed by the Islamic State group.
KABUL, Afghanistan — At least 41 people were killed and dozens more wounded Thursday in a bombing at a Shiite cultural center in Kabul that also houses a news agency, Afghan officials said, in an attack claimed by the Islamic State extremist group.
It was the latest in a series of mass-casualty attacks against Shiite targets by the militant group’s Afghan affiliate. The U.N. mission in Afghanistan has documented more than a dozen attacks since January 2016, with hundreds of Shiites dead or wounded. One of the deadliest was in October, when suicide bombers killed at least 57 worshippers in a Shiite mosque in Kabul, the capital, and injured dozens more.
“I have little doubt that this attack deliberately targeted civilians,” said Toby Lanzer, acting head of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan. “Today in Kabul we have witnessed another truly despicable crime in a year already marked by unspeakable atrocities.”
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 Islamic State-linked Aamaq news agency said four bombs were used in the attack, one strapped to the suicide attacker. It said the center was funded by Iran and used to propagate Shiite beliefs.
Wahidullah Majrooh, a spokesman for the Afghan Health Ministry, said at least 41 people were killed and 84 wounded in the attack. Workers at the Istiqlal hospital appeared overwhelmed by the number of victims, some of them lying in the corridors. Many were being treated for severe burns. Family members arrived to claim the bodies of loved ones.
The Shiite cultural center attacked Thursday is known to have leanings toward Iran; pictures of the country’s supreme leader are often on display at its gatherings.
The cultural center’s website and Facebook page showed it hosting discussions and gatherings on religious and political issues, many of them critical of the West’s approach to the Middle East. At a recent event, members stomped on Israeli flags and burned pictures of President Donald Trump.
Reza Khalili, a reporter for the Afghan Voice Agency, a news organization run by the center, said the facility was a three-story building, with the news agency on the top floor, and the cultural center and a gathering hall in the basement.
“A suicide attacker entered the hall in the basement, where 150 to 200 people were gathered, and he blew himself up,” Khalili said. “Most of those killed were participants of the program.”
The news agency’s owner, Sayed Eissa Hussaini Mazari, is a strong proponent of Iran, and the agency’s output is dominated by Iranian news.
Hamid Paiman Azimi, 28, another reporter at the agency, was in the agency’s thirdfloor offices when the suicide blast went off.
“Those who were in the first and second floors all were killed or wounded; no one remained,” said Azimi, whose father was killed in the mosque attack in October. “I did not see much blood; all the victims were burned by the fire caused by the explosion.”
A local extremist group claiming allegiance to the Islamic State emerged in 2014 in the eastern province of Nangarhar, and spread quickly to at least nine districts there. Sustained operations by U.S. and Afghan security forces reduced its presence last year to three districts; efforts since then to eradicate the insurgents have stalled, although U.S. military officials said they had “removed from the battlefield” at least 1,600 of the group’s fighters since March.
The top U.S. commander has likened the problem to a balloon — when the group is squeezed in one district, it emerges in another.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani called Thursday’s attack a “crime against humanity.” The U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, John Bass, said, “We remain confident the Afghan government and people, supported by their friends and partners, will defeat those behind these terrible acts.”
In a statement, the White House pledged to work with the government to bring the attackers to justice, saying “the enemies of Afghanistan will not succeed in their attempts to destroy the country and divide the Afghan people.”
Information for this article was contributed by Fahim Abed, Fatima Faizi and Mujib Mashal of The New York Times and by Amir Shah of The Associated Press.