US to hold face-to-face meeting with Taliban after brutal attack in Afghanistan

The United States and the Taliban will maintain their first face-to-face dialogue since the withdrawal from Afghanistan, where a suicide bombing claimed by the Islamic State group caused at least 80 dead in a mosque in Kunduz (northeast).

A US delegation will meet with representatives of the Islamist movement on Saturday and Sunday in Doha, the capital of Qatar, a State Department spokesperson said.

Representatives of Joe Biden’s government have reportedly had contact with the new Afghan leadership since the capture of Kabul in August, but this will be their first face-to-face meeting.

“We will pressure the Taliban respect the rights of all Afghans, including women and girls, and form an inclusive government with broad support, ”the spokesperson anticipated.

This meeting in no way implies recognition of the Taliban regime, the spokesperson said. “All legitimacy must be earned by the Taliban’s own actions,” he warned.

This movement was announced hours after a brutal attack carried out during the midday prayer in a Shiite mosque in Kunduz, which left at least 80 dead.

The IS group, which also carried out an attack on another mosque in Kabul last Sunday in which five people died, claimed responsibility for the attack on one of its Telegram channels.

According to the jihadist organization, the author was nicknamed “Mohammed the Uyghur”, implying that he was part of the Chinese Muslim minority, some of whom have joined ISIS.

According to “preliminary” information, the explosion is the work of a suicide bomber, Matiullah Rohani, a Taliban regional official in charge of Culture and Information, told AFP news agency.

This is the attack deadliest strikes Afghanistan since the withdrawal of American and foreign troops on August 30.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres condemned “in the strongest terms” the attack, “the third against a religious building in less than a week”.

At Kunduz central hospital, a doctor who did not want to reveal his identity explained that he had received “35 bodies and more than 50 wounded”.

The local Médecins Sans Frontières clinic announced that it had taken care of 20 other dead and 90 injured.

A witness who was in the mosque and who only said his name, Rahmatullah, said: “There were 300 or 400 people inside, there weren’t any more anywhere. We were in the lobby when suddenly the explosion happened.

The outbreak has occurred during the midday prayer, the busiest Friday, a Muslim day of rest, and witnesses described atrocious scenes. “I saw at least 40 bodies,” said local trader Zalmai Alokzai, who immediately went to the hospital to donate blood to the victims. “Ambulances came and went to transport the bodies,” he said.

Speaking to local reporters, Dost Muhammad, head of the Taliban security service in Kunduz, said that “those who committed this act want to sow discord between Sunnis and Shiites.” “We assure our Shiite brothers that we will guarantee their safety and that these attacks will not be repeated,” he added.

Since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in mid-August, the local branch of ISIS, IS-K (Islamic State of Khorasan), has stepped up its attacks.

For the Taliban, who control all of Afghanistan, the main threat comes from IS-K, which has between 500 and several thousand fighters on Afghan territory, according to the United Nations.

IS-K is behind some of the bloodiest attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan in recent years, including the one at Kabul airport on August 26 that killed more than 100, including 13 US soldiers .

With information from AFP