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KABUL – A man wearing an explosive vest entered a crowd of protesters protesting the looting and brutality of a powerful local police commander in eastern Afghanistan and blew himself up on Tuesday.
The local ISIS affiliate, who has claimed a series of attacks in Nangarhar province in recent months, has not commented on the strike. The Taliban, the biggest insurgency in the country, denied any involvement.
A health official from Nangarhar province said that the bodies of 33 dead protesters had been transferred to a local hospital and that 128 others had been injured during the strike. "This is probably not the final result. We think that there will be more, "said the official.
The blast was directed against an unusual political demonstration in which several hundred people blocked a highway linking the provincial capital of Jalalabad to Torkham, on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. They insisted that the government dismiss and arrest the police commander in Achin District, Bilal Padshah, that they accused of extortion, looting and murder, allegations that he has denied. A handful of protesters continued to protest after the blast, a witness said.
The protesters' accusations echo those of the civil war in Afghanistan in the early 1990s, a loot battle between warlords, thugs and mujahideen fighters who reduced anarchy to parts of the country. This paved the way for the Taliban's takeover of the country, which promised to restore order with its own austere version of Islam.
The attack comes as the United States intensifies its 17-year war in Afghanistan with increased troop presence and intensified air strikes to force the Taliban into peace talks, with the aim of eradicating the Islamic State on Sunday. more radical.
Since mid-June, a series of attacks claimed by the Islamic State or suspected by Afghan security officials to have been carried out by an extremist Sunni organization has shaken Jalalabad. US and Afghan forces, assisted by units led by local authorities such as Padshah, chased the group's fighters from their old redoubts in Achin and Deh Bela districts.
Just hours before Tuesday's attack, a 14-year-old boy was killed and four others injured when two bombs exploded a few minutes apart in front of a girls' school in Jalalabad. The authorities believe that Tuesday's attacks were coordinated.
The attacks claimed by the local affiliate of the Islamic State wreaked havoc in eastern Afghanistan last week. Afghan security officials say the affiliate is largely Afghans, some of whom are disaffected Taliban supporters, with a handful of foreign fighters.
On Sunday, the group claimed a suicide bombing that allegedly killed seven people and injured 20 others in a convoy of armed men in Kabul who were marching through the streets to commemorate the anniversary of the death of the famous anti-Taliban commander Ahmed Shah Massoud. The killing of al Qaeda by Osama bin Laden was a prelude to the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington, exactly 17 years ago.
Last week, ISIS claimed to be behind two bomb attacks in a heavily Shiite neighborhood in western Kabul that killed more than 20 people, including two Afghan journalists.
In a comment broadcast later by the Voice of the Caliphate radio station, the jihadist group said it would continue to attack Afghan journalists, who it said would serve US interests by justifying heavy aerial bombings on the ground. territory of the group.
"We will kill them the same way every time we have an opportunity," the radio said, according to the monitoring service of the British Broadcasting Corp.
Write to Craig Nelson at [email protected]
