KABUL: A suicide bomber blew himself up in the Afghan capital on Friday, killing at least seven people in an attack on a crowd gathered to commemorate a political leader from the Hazara minority, officials said.
One policeman and six civilians were killed and 15 civilians wounded when the bomber was stopped at a security checkpoint in the Mosalla-e Mazar area of Kabul, said Najib Danesh, an interior ministry spokesman.
There was some doubt about the toll, which some witnesses said was higher than the official figure. Shah Shir Azara, a security marshal at the site, said 13 people had been killed.
The bomber appeared to have intended to attack a crowd gathered to mark the anniversary of the killing of Hazara political leader Abdul Ali Mazari by the Taliban in 1995, but he was stopped before reaching the main gathering.
Daesh claimed responsibility. It has done so for several attacks on Shiite mosques and Hazara gatherings over the past two years.
Little is known about the group and its capacity to conduct sophisticated attacks remains disputed, with many Afghan and Western security officials saying they doubt it works alone.
Afghanistan, a mainly Sunni Muslim country, has not seen the level of sectarian violence common in Iraq, but the attacks have fueled increasing anger among the Hazara, a group that has long faced discrimination.
In December, dozens of people were killed in a suicide attack on a Shiite cultural center claimed by Daesh, and two months earlier two separate mosque attacks killed at least 72 people.
Friday’s attack came less than two weeks after President Ashraf Ghani called on the Taliban to join peace talks in a country which has been at war for decades.
The conflict kills thousands each year, with fighting continuing across large parts of the country and Kabul itself hit repeatedly by attacks.
On Thursday night, Taliban fighters attacked a joint army and police outpost in the northern province of Takhar, killing seven soldiers and 10 policemen, according to Khalil Aseer, a provincial police spokesman.
The Taliban said in a statement that 29 soldiers and police were killed in the attack, including four commanders.
Daesh claims Kabul suicide attack that killed at least 7
Daesh claims Kabul suicide attack that killed at least 7
Burkina jihadist attacks on army leave at least 10 dead
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast: Suspected Islamist militants attacked an army unit in northern Burkina Faso Sunday, the latest in a series of alleged jihadist attacks that have killed at least 10 people in four days, security sources told AFP.
The west African country, ruled by a military junta since a 2022 coup, has been plagued with violence from militants allied to Al-Qaeda or the Daesh group for more than a decade.
Social media has been awash with speculation that the spate of attacks may have killed dozens of soldiers, but AFP has been unable to independently verify those claims.
The junta, which seized power on the promise to crack down on the violence, has ceased to communicate on jihadist attacks.
On Sunday, militants carried out a major attack on a military detachment in the northern town of Nare, two security sources told AFP.
The previous day, the Burkinabe army’s unit in the northern city of Titao was “targeted by a group of several hundred terrorists,” one of the sources said.
While the source did not give a death toll for either attack, they said part of the military base in Titao had been destroyed.
The interior minister of Ghana, which borders Burkina Faso to the south, said the government had “received disturbing information from Burkina Faso of a truck carrying tomato traders from Ghana which was caught in a terrorist attack in Titao.”
Jihadist ‘coordination’
According to the same security source, another army base in Tandjari, in the east of the country, was also attacked Saturday, and several officers killed.
“This series of attacks is not a coincidence,” the source said. “There seems to be coordination among the jihadists.”
A separate security source told AFP that a “terrorist group attacked the (military) detachment in Bilanga,” in the east of the country, on Thursday.
“Much of the detachment was ransacked,” the source said, giving a toll of “about 10 deaths” among the soldiers and civilian volunteers fighting alongside the army.
A local source confirmed the attack, adding there was damage in the town of Bilanga, and that the assailants had stayed at the scene until the following day.
Despite the junta’s vow to restore security, Burkina Faso remains caught in a spiral of violence.
According to conflict monitor ACLED, the unrest has killed tens of thousands of civilians and soldiers since 2015 — and more than half of those deaths have come in the past three years.
