According to a doctor from an Aybak hospital, all victims are “children and ordinary people”. A provincial official has confirmed the explosion, but could not give information about the circumstances and the number of victims.
MO12345lemonde with AFP
At least sixteen people were killed and twenty-four others were injured on Wednesday, November 30, during a attack in a Koranic school in the city of Aybak, in northern Afghanistan. “These are all children and ordinary people,” a doctor at a hospital in Aybak, located about 300 kilometers north of Kabul.
told France-Presse.
A provincial official confirmed the explosion, but could not provide precision on the number of victims and the circumstances of the attack. “Our investigators and security forces work quickly to identify the perpetrators of this unforgivable crime and punish them for their actions,” tweeted the spokesman for the Interior Ministry, Abdul Nafay Takor.
Photos and videos broadcast on social networks, which could not be authenticated immediately, show Taliban fighters near bodies scattered on the ground of a building covered with traces of blood. Prayer carpets, broken glass and other debris also litter the room.
dozens of attacks against civilians since August 2021
The return to power of the Taliban in August 2021 ended two decades of war in Afghanistan and led to a significant reduction in violence. But dozens of attacks targeting civilians have taken place, however, most claimed by the local section of the Islamic State group (IS-K). Taliban officials assure that they master security in the country, and often deny or minimize incidents reported on social networks.
Analysts consider, however, that the jihadists of IS – a Sunni group, like the Taliban, but with which they have a deep enmity and ideological differences – remain the main threat of the power regime in Afghanistan. On October 5, at least four people had been killed in Kabul during an explosion in a mosque of the Ministry of the Interior. A few days earlier, on September 30, a suicide attack committed in a Kabul training center preparing for university exams had killed 54 people, including at least 51 girls, according to the UN. The attack had been perpetrated in a district populated by the Shiite Hazara minority.
This attack had not been claimed, but the Afghan government had accused the IS-K of having perpetrated it. In mid-October, Afghan security forces announced that they had killed six EI-K members, accused of being involved in this attack as well as that of a Kabul mosque. On September 23, at least seven people had been killed in the explosion of a car trapped near the capital mosque, frequented by senior Taliban officials and fighters.