Islamic State tied to horrific assault

KABUL — A U.S. official said Friday the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan carried out this week’s horrific attack on a maternity hospital in a majority Shiite Muslim neighborhood in Kabul, killing 24 people including newborn babies and mothers.

Peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad said the U.S. government believes the Islamic State affiliate carried out Tuesday’s attack on the hospital and an assault earlier the same day in a different province targeting the funeral of a progovernment warlord killing 34 people.

Islamic State “has demonstrated a pattern for favoring these types of heinous attacks against civilians and is a threat to the Afghan people and to the world,” Khalilzad tweeted.

The extremist group has not claimed responsibility for the maternity hospital attack.

Also on Friday, Parisbased charity Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres), which operates the hospital, called the attack “pure hell.” It said the gunmen moved directly to the maternity wards, ignoring other medical units closer to the entrance of the medical complex. They were searching out the newborns and the mothers, the group said Friday.

The Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan has carried out several devastating attacks, mostly targeting the country’s minority Shiite Muslims.

The Taliban denied involvement in either attack, calling the maternity hospital assault a “vile, inhumane and an unIslamic act.”