Blast blamed on Islamic State group
Suicide bomb outside a Kabul bank kills 34.
KABUL, Afghanistan — A suicide bombing outside a crowded bank has left at least 34 people dead and more than 120 wounded in eastern Afghanistan.
If claims by the group are corroborated, Saturday’s blast could prove to be the first instance of a large, coordinated Islamic Stateled attack in the country.
In the days leading up to their state visit to Washington in March, high-level officials in the government of President Ashraf Ghani had repeatedly warned that Islamic State militants were present in Afghanistan but not yet at an actionable stage.
At the time of Saturday’s attack, dozens of people — mainly government workers and military officials collecting their monthly salaries — were waiting outside the bank branch in Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province.
Fazel Ahmad Sherzad, Jalalabad city police chief, said at a news conference that an investigation is underway.
“It was a suicide attack. …. It is early to say what kind of suicide bomber” committed the act, Sherzad said.
A group claiming to belong to Islamic State released its own account of the attack.
Shahidullah Shahid, who said he is a spokesman for the group in Afghanistan, claimed responsibility. Im- ages circulated online by social media accounts claiming to be allied with Islamic State purported to show the bomber standing in front of a black flag associated with the Sunni militant group that has seized large swathes of Syr- ia and Iraq.
In a statement, Ghani, who was on his way to Badakhshan, where last week 23 members of the Afghan army died in a series of attacks, condemned the violence in Jalalabad as a “cowardly and heinous ter- rorist attack on civilians.”
“If we don’t stand on the same line united, these people are going to destroy us,” Ghani told a crowd of 600 Saturday in Faizabad, the capital of northeastern Badakhshan province.
The Taliban, too, condemned the attack.
In a statement to Reuters, Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, said: “It was an evil act. We strongly condemn it.”
Earlier reports of an Islamic State presence in Afghanistan focused on rifts among the Taliban ranks that led to splits and ultimately bids to join in the larger Middle East-based militant group headed by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Speaking to Tribune Newspapers in March, Abdul Salam Rahimi, chief of staff to Ghani, said that if the Taliban agree to negotiations with the Afghan government he could envision a situation where they joined Kabul in fighting any Islamic State presence in Afghanistan.
The Islamic State group has seen its public image rise since it seized much of Iraq last summer. Its online videos and propaganda, including scenes of its mass killings and beheadings, have caught the attention of many extremists.
In Libya, an Islamic State group affiliate has carried out attacks and beheaded 21 Coptic Christians from Egypt. Insurgents in Egypt’s strategic Sinai Peninsula also have pledged to the group, while another purported affiliate in Yemen claimed a series of suicide bombings in March that killed at least 137 people.
In recent days, Ismail Khan, long a dominant figure in Afghanistan’s western province of Herat, told The Associated Press that the numbers of Islamic State supporters are growing because of divisions in Ghani’s government. Afghanistan’s senior Shiite leader, Mohammad Mohaqiq, told the AP this month that Islamic State loyalists in southern Zabul province also were behind the abduction of 31 ethnic Hazara Shiites in February.
Meanwhile, in Kabul, the parliament approved 16 candidates Saturday to head ministries and other highlevel posts. The vote, marking the second attempt in four months at approving a complete candidate, failed to provide a leader for the defense ministry. But it did result in three more women being selected to help run the government.
“If we don’t stand on the same line united, these people are going to destroy us.”
— Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani