Islamic State loyalists kill 26 civilians in Afghanistan, officials say

KABUL, Afghanistan — Gunmen kidnapped and killed 26 civilians, including children, in an isolated central province in the latest violence attributed to loyalists of the Islamic State group in Afghanistan, officials said Tuesday.

Officials in Ghor province said the civilians were abducted Tuesday outside the provincial capital of Ferozkoh during fighting between the gunmen and Afghan security forces.

The gunmen were Taliban insurgents who now claimed allegiance to IS, the extremist organization based in Iraq and Syria that has carried out several bloody attacks in Afghanistan, officials said.

Ghulam Nasir Khadeh, the provincial governor, said by phone that authorities in Ferozkoh had received 26 bodies of more than 30 who were abducted Tuesday. The whereabouts of the others were not immediately known.

The Taliban denied involvement in the incident.

Fazlulhaq Ehsan, head of the provincial council in Ghor, said the civilians were shepherds and farmers from the Tajik ethnicity.

The leader of the gunmen, whom officials identified as Faruq, was killed in the fighting with security forces. Faruq was a wellknown outlaw in the province, one of Afghanistan’s poorest, who swore allegiance to IS about a year ago, officials said.

Islamic State in Khorasan — the militant group’s branch in Afghanistan and Pakistan — has been blamed since last year for a series of large-scale attacks on and kidnappings of members of the Hazara ethnic minority, who are targeted by the Sunni Muslim extremists because they are Shiites.

Even as IS’s bases in Iraq and Syria come under pressure by government forces in both countries (witnesses say the extremists are driving hundreds of people into Mosul and using them as human shields, while senior Defense Department and military officials say that the fight to retake the Syrian city of Raqqa that serves as the capital of IS must begin within weeks), the militant group has shown its ability to carry out massive violence, particularly in South Asia. On Monday, it claimed responsibility for a raid on a Pakistani police academy that left more than 60 people dead in the northwestern city of Quetta.

Elsewhere in Afghanistan, Taliban fighters blocked a major highway Wednesday linking Kabul to the southern city of Kandahar as militants press an offensive against government forces near the capital.

At the same time, the Pentagon said that U.S. military airstrikes have targeted two senior al-Qaida figures in the rugged Kunar province.