The Taliban has claimed arresting a member of the Islamic State – Khurasan Province (ISKP) who was involved in plotting several deadly attacks, including the one which killed Taliban governor in Balkh and attacks against Shiites. The man has admitted that he was recruited for the ISKP in Iran.
In a video released by the Taliban’s intelligence agency, General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI), the detainee looks a young man who identifies himself as Aynuddin, also known with the pseudonym Mohammad, from Saighan district of the central Bamyan province.
“I was invited and recruited by a person named [voice stopped] to Daesh nearly two and a half years back in Iran,” he says in the video, using the local acronym for the ISKP.
The alleged ISKP member also admits and explains how he and several others plotted the suicide attack which killed the powerful Taliban’s Balkh governor, Dawood Muzamel, in March.
“We went to [the Balkh’s governor building] nearly one hour before the operation was carried out to assess the situation and how the body-checking was done,” he says, adding that later they sent a Tajikistani national who managed to carry out the suicide attack within half an hour and killed the Taliban governor.
In addition to the governor, two others were also reportedly killed in the attack.
Moreover, he also admits plotting attacks on a bus full of the Shiite’s community members, a Shiite Mosque, and the attack on a gathering of local journalists in Tebyan Cultural Centre in Mazar-e-Sharif, capital city of the northern Balkh province.
According to the Taliban’s GDI, the man has been also involved in plotting an attack on al-Jihad madrassa in the northern Samangan province which killed at least 19 students and wounded more than 20 others in November 2022.
Contrary to the Taliban’s repeated claim of suppressing the ISKP, Afghanistan has seen mounting deadly attacks by the ISKP in recent months. Last month, the ISKP claimed responsibility for a total of three attacks in Balkh and in the capital Kabul.
