ISIS claimed responsibility for double Kabul bombing | At least 15 deaths have been recorded in the vicinity of the airport

The Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility for the double attack which caused a massacre near the Kabul airport, the Afghan capital, according to a message broadcast by the extremist militia channel on Telegram.

Two suicide bombers and men armed with rifles attacked a crowd at the entrance to the terminal, where the evacuation of those who want to flee the country after the Taliban seized power has been concentrated in recent days.

The Afghan branch of ISIS, called ISIS-K, claimed responsibility for the attack and clarified that a suicide bomber, which they identified, detonated an explosive vest between Afghans and US forces.

This coincides with what was reported by General Kenneth F. McKenzie, head of the United States Central Command, who blamed the extremist militia for the attack in which 12 American servicemen died and 15 others were injured.

The Afghan Information Network TOLO He reported that the explosion occurred in the access to the airport in the crowd waiting for a chance to board a plane.

For his part, Paul Farthing, a former British serviceman who witnessed the attack from a car, said he saw one of the attackers armed with an AK-47 rifle. “Suddenly we heard gunshots and our vehicle was attacked, and if our driver had not turned around he would have been shot in the head by a man with an AK-47,” Farthing wrote on Twitter.

The Taliban, who control the periphery of the airport, put the death toll at “between 13 and 20” and the wounded at 52, condemning the attacks and saying they “took place in an area where security is between the hands of the American forces “.

The Islamist Taliban militia “strongly condemns attacks on civilians at Kabul airport,” its spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said on Twitter.

The attacks of this Thursday, the first of its kind against Afghan civilians and foreign nationals since the Taliban took over power in Afghanistan, They arrived hours after several Western countries warned of attacks impending at the international airport of the Afghan capital by the jihadist group Islamic State (IS), which was nurtured by former Taliban with an even more extreme vision of Islam than the official one of the Afghan movement.

Hamid Karzai International Airport, conflict zone

Last week, Kabul Airport has been the scene of some of the most dramatic images, and from there they left one after another to drive out those who fear reprisals for collaborating or working for foreign forces or that the Taliban will re-impose the brutal regime that characterized their previous government until it was overthrown by an international invasion led by the United States in 2001.

Taliban insisted that all foreign troops must leave Afghanistan by August 31, the date set by the United States to complete its withdrawal, and that the evacuations must also cease on that day.

The White House He reported that 101,300 people have already been evacuated from Afghanistan since the end of July, 95,700 of them since the seizure of power by the Taliban and 5,000 by the United States in the last 24 hours. They also notified that despite what happened on Thursday, they will continue with the established plan, with reference to the evacuation of “about a thousand Americans” from Afghanistan by August 31.

As, other countries had already ended their evacuations to make way for the withdrawal of their soldiers and diplomats Before the attacks, it is the case in Germany which did it Thursday, as announced its Minister of Defense, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer.

A few hours before the attacks, UK said “terrorist attack” could happen within hours, and Belgium that there was a threat of a “suicide bombing”.

Finally, Australia, New Zealand and the UK have asked their citizens not to go to the airport, and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs said there was a “very high threat of ‘terrorist attack “.

ISIS-K

Months after ISIS declared a caliphate in Iraq and Syria in 2014, former Pakistani Taliban pledged allegiance to it and joined other militants in Afghanistan. to form a regional section. ISIS’s central leadership officially recognized the group a year after it settled in northeastern Afghanistan, in Kunar, Nangarhar and Nuristan provinces. The group has also established cells in other parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan, including Kabul, according to UN observers.

ISIS-K has claimed responsibility for some of the wildest attacks in recent years in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He slaughtered civilians in both countries in mosques, shrines, squares and hospitals.

The Sunni extremist group has particularly targeted Muslims it considers to be heretics, in particular the Shiites. In August 2019, he claimed responsibility for the attack on the Shiites at a wedding in Kabul, in which 91 people died.