ISLAMABAD: A Daesh affiliate on Friday claimed a series of bombings a day earlier that targeted Afghanistan’s minority Shiite Muslims, while Pakistan issued a warning of Daesh threats in its eastern Punjab province.
The deadliest of three bombings on Thursday in Afghanistan exploded inside a Shite mosque in northern Mazar-e-Sharif. Hospital officials say at least 12 people were killed and as many as 40 were hurt.
Earlier Thursday, a roadside bomb exploded near a boys school in the Afghan capital of Kabul, injuring two children in the city’s predominately Shiite neighborhood of Dasht-e-Barchi. A third bomb in northern Kunduz injured 11 mechanics working for the country’s Taliban rulers.
Since sweeping to power last August, the Taliban have been battling the upstart Daesh affiliate “Khorasan” or IS-K” which is proving to be an intractable security challenge for Afghanistan’s religiously driven government. Last November the Taliban’s intelligence unit carried out sweeping attacks on suspected IS-K hideouts in eastern Nangarhar province.
In a statement Friday, the IS-K said the explosive devise that devastated Mazar-e-Sharif’s Sai Doken mosque was hidden in a bag left inside among scores of worshippers. As they knelt in prayer, it exploded.
“When the mosque was filled with prayers, the explosives were detonated remotely,” the Daesh statement said, claiming that 100 people were injured.
The Taliban say they have arrested a former IS-K leader in northern Balkh province, of which Mazar-e-Sharif is the capital. Zabihullah Noorani, information and culture department chief in Balkh province, said Abdul Hamid Sangaryar was arrested in connection with Thursday’s mosque attack.
The IS-K had been relatively inactive in Afghanistan since last November, but in recent days have stepped up its attacks in Afghanistan and in neighboring Pakistan, taking aim at Shiite Muslim communities reviled by Sunni radicals.
Earlier this month two bombs exploded in Kabul’s Shiite neighborhood of Dasht-e-Barchi, killing at least seven students and wounding several others.
The IS-K established its headquarters in eastern Afghanistan in 2014 and have been blamed for some of the worst attacks in Afghanistan, including a vicious assault on a maternity hospital and at a school that killed more than 80 girls in 2021, months before the Taliban took power.
The IS-K also took responsibility for a brutal bombing outside the Kabul International Airport in August 2021 that killed more than 160 Afghans who had been pushing to enter the airport to flee the country. Thirteen US military personnel also were killed as they oversaw America’s final withdrawal and the end of its 20-year war in Afghanistan.
In recent months, the IS-K has also stepped up attacks in neighboring Pakistan, targeting a Shiite mosque in the northwestern city of Peshawar in March. More than 65 worshippers were killed. The upstart affiliate has also claimed several deadly attacks against Pakistan’s military .
In Pakistan’s central Punjab city of Faisalabad, the local police on Thursday issued a threat warning, saying “it has been learned that IS-K has planned to carry out terrorist activities in Faisalabad,” advising people to “exercise extreme vigilance.” The police warning did not elaborate.
Meanwhile late on Thursday a Pakistani soldier was killed in southwestern Baluchistan province after militants raided a security outpost. No one claimed responsibility. The area has been targeted by both IS-K as well as the violent Pakistani Taliban militants known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) also headquartered in neighboring Afghanistan.
The safe havens of militant groups in Afghanistan has raised concerns for Pakistan which earlier this month carried out air strikes inside Afghanistan, killing at least 20 children, according to the United Nations education fund (UNICEF).
Pakistan has not confirmed the strikes but has warned Afghanistan’s Taliban to stop its territory being used to attack across the border into Pakistan.
In separate incidents, five children were killed Friday in northern Afghanistan’s Faryab Province while playing with unexploded ordnance. In one incident, three brothers died when they found an unexploded device and tried to dismantle it. In a second incident in another village, two children, ages 7 and 8, were killed playing with a device, said Shamsullah Mohammadi, Faryab provincial information and culture head.
After more than four decades of war, that included two invasions — one by the former Soviet Union and one by the US-led coalition — Afghanistan is one of the heaviest mined countries in the world and is littered with unexploded ordnance.
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Afghan Daesh group claims series of bombings targeting Shiites
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Afghan Daesh group claims series of bombings targeting Shiites
- Police in Pakistan issued a warning of Daesh threats in its eastern Punjab province
- Pakistani soldier was killed in southwestern Baluchistan province after militants raided a security outpost
ASEAN should adhere to rule of law in face of ‘unilateral actions,’ Philippines’ top diplomat says
- Several ASEAN members have expressed deep concern over the US strike that resulted in the arrest of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro
- Philippines’ top envoy: ‘Across our region, we continue to see tensions at sea, protracted internal conflicts and unresolved border and humanitarian concerns’
CEBU, Philippines: Southeast Asian countries should steadfastly maintain restraint and adhere to international law as acts of aggression across Asia and “unilateral actions” elsewhere in the world threaten the rules-based global order, Manila’s top diplomat said Thursday.
Philippine Foreign Secretary Theresa Lazaro did not provide details of the geopolitical alarm she raised before her counterparts in the 11-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations who were holding their first major closed-door meetings this year in the Philippines’ central seaside city of Cebu.
Several ASEAN members, however, have expressed deep concern over the secretive US strike that resulted in the arrest of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro on orders from US President Donald Trump. China’s intensifying aggressive stance on Taiwan and in the disputed South China Sea have also troubled the region for years.
Calling out the US and China, among the largest trading and defense partners of ASEAN countries, have been a dilemma and diplomatic tightrope.
“Across our region, we continue to see tensions at sea, protracted internal conflicts and unresolved border and humanitarian concerns,” Lazaro said in her opening speech before ASEAN counterparts.
“At the same time, developments beyond Southeast Asia, including unilateral actions that carry cross-regional implications, continue to affect regional stability and erode multilateral institutions and the rules- based international order,” she said.
“These realities underscore the interim importance of ASEAN’s time-honored principles of restraint, dialogue and adherence to international law in seeking to preserve peace and stability to our peoples.”
The Philippines holds ASEAN’s rotating chair this year, taking what would have been Myanmar’s turn after the country was suspended from chairing the meeting after its army forcibly ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s democratically elected government in 2021.
Founded in 1967 in the Cold War era, ASEAN has an unwieldy membership of diverse countries that range from vibrant democracies like the Philippines, a longtime treaty ally of Washington, to authoritarian states like Laos and Cambodia, which are close to Beijing.
The regional bloc adopted the theme “Navigating our future, Together” this year but that effort to project unity faced its latest setback last year when deadly fighting erupted between two members, Thailand and Cambodia, over a longtime border conflict.
Aside from discussing the deadly fighting that embroiled Thailand and Cambodia before both forged a US-backed ceasefire last year, the ASEAN foreign ministers will deliberate how to push a five-point peace plan for the war in Myanmar, issued by the regional bloc’s leaders in 2021. The plan demanded, among others, an immediate end to fighting and hostilities, but it has failed to end the violence or foster dialogue among contending parties.
ASEAN foreign ministers are also under pressure to conclude negotiations with China ahead of a self-imposed deadline this year on a so-called “code of conduct” to manage disputes over long-unresolved territorial rifts in the South China Sea. China has expansive claims in the waterway, a key global trade route, that overlap with those of four ASEAN members, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunei.
Philippine Foreign Secretary Theresa Lazaro did not provide details of the geopolitical alarm she raised before her counterparts in the 11-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations who were holding their first major closed-door meetings this year in the Philippines’ central seaside city of Cebu.
Several ASEAN members, however, have expressed deep concern over the secretive US strike that resulted in the arrest of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro on orders from US President Donald Trump. China’s intensifying aggressive stance on Taiwan and in the disputed South China Sea have also troubled the region for years.
Calling out the US and China, among the largest trading and defense partners of ASEAN countries, have been a dilemma and diplomatic tightrope.
“Across our region, we continue to see tensions at sea, protracted internal conflicts and unresolved border and humanitarian concerns,” Lazaro said in her opening speech before ASEAN counterparts.
“At the same time, developments beyond Southeast Asia, including unilateral actions that carry cross-regional implications, continue to affect regional stability and erode multilateral institutions and the rules- based international order,” she said.
“These realities underscore the interim importance of ASEAN’s time-honored principles of restraint, dialogue and adherence to international law in seeking to preserve peace and stability to our peoples.”
The Philippines holds ASEAN’s rotating chair this year, taking what would have been Myanmar’s turn after the country was suspended from chairing the meeting after its army forcibly ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s democratically elected government in 2021.
Founded in 1967 in the Cold War era, ASEAN has an unwieldy membership of diverse countries that range from vibrant democracies like the Philippines, a longtime treaty ally of Washington, to authoritarian states like Laos and Cambodia, which are close to Beijing.
The regional bloc adopted the theme “Navigating our future, Together” this year but that effort to project unity faced its latest setback last year when deadly fighting erupted between two members, Thailand and Cambodia, over a longtime border conflict.
Aside from discussing the deadly fighting that embroiled Thailand and Cambodia before both forged a US-backed ceasefire last year, the ASEAN foreign ministers will deliberate how to push a five-point peace plan for the war in Myanmar, issued by the regional bloc’s leaders in 2021. The plan demanded, among others, an immediate end to fighting and hostilities, but it has failed to end the violence or foster dialogue among contending parties.
ASEAN foreign ministers are also under pressure to conclude negotiations with China ahead of a self-imposed deadline this year on a so-called “code of conduct” to manage disputes over long-unresolved territorial rifts in the South China Sea. China has expansive claims in the waterway, a key global trade route, that overlap with those of four ASEAN members, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunei.
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