ISIS kills 15 at Afghan refugee office

KABUL, Afghanistan — Attackers overran a government refugee office in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday, killing 15 people in at least the 10th such attack on civilian targets this year, according to Afghan officials.

The assault was part of a series of attacks attributed to the Islamic State against “soft targets” in or near the city of Jalalabad, where the extremists have been particularly active, mostly attacking civilians rather than confronting Afghan security forces.

The attack Tuesday began with two midday explosions outside the department of refugee affairs, with several gunmen then entering the building and its compound, said Attaullah Khogyani, the spokesman for the governor of Nangarhar province.

Special forces engaged in “intensive fighting” against the attackers, Khogyani said, and rescued several people who were trapped inside the building.

Khogyani said the Islamic State was probably responsible for the attack, which he said had begun as refugee officials were meeting with donors’ representatives, although no foreigners were present.

The 15 people killed included a woman and a police officer, Khogyani said, and 15 others were injured, some of them as a result of injuries suffered when they jumped from the building during the attack. All three attackers were killed.

The Islamic State’s affiliate in Afghanistan, which calls itself the Islamic State in Khorasan, did not immediately claim responsibility, but normally it makes such claims only after an assault is over, and often the following day.

The Islamic State in Khorasan has its strongest Afghan presence in southern Nangarhar province and has carried out at least nine other attacks against purely civilian targets in Jalalabad or nearby this year. The group turned to suicide attacks on civilian targets, particularly lightly defended ones, after being heavily battered by U.S. airstrikes and American and Afghan special operations assaults last year.

Abdul Rahman Mawen, a civil activist in Jalalabad, blamed the extremists’ declining battlefield fortunes for the attacks on soft targets. “ISIS was fighting against security forces in the first stages, but when they were beaten and suppressed by the security forces, they started attacking women, children, and civilian targets,” he said.