At least seven people were killed and 20 others were injured in a blast that targeted a minibus in the Dasht-e-Barchi district of Kabul on Tuesday evening November 7, the Taliban’s spokesman for the Kabul police command, Khalid Zadran, said.
The Taliban has not provided details about the incident. However, hours later, the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISKP), the local affiliate of the Islamic State group, claimed responsibility for the attack. This marks the second attack in a month that ISKP has claimed to have carried out in the area. On October 26, the group claimed responsibility for an attack on a boxing club in the area, which resulted in the deaths of six people and injuries to 11 others.
Western Kabul, a neighborhood populated by Shia Hazaras, has been targeted in the past by the Islamic State group affiliate in the country, which has carried out major, horrific attacks on schools, hospitals, and mosques. The group has also attacked other Shiite areas of Afghanistan in recent years. On October 13, it targeted a Shia mosque in northern Afghanistan, killing at least 30 people and injuring dozens.
In his recent report to the Human Rights Council, the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, raised concerns about ongoing human rights violations and persecution of Hazaras under the Taliban. The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) recently said that it had been able to confirm extrajudicial killings, forced displacement, and destruction of property and arable land in the southern Uruzgan province.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported last year that since the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August 2021, the Islamic State affiliate group, ISKP, has claimed responsibility for 13 attacks against Hazaras and has been linked to at least 3 more, killing and injuring at least 700 people. The organization also stated that the Taliban’s increasing crackdown on the media, especially in the provinces, means that additional attacks have likely gone unreported. The Taliban’s failure to protect vulnerable communities and provide medical and other assistance to survivors and their families, as well as its policies that violate human rights, especially those of women and girls, worsens the harm caused by these attacks.
The targeted attacks against the Hazara community in Afghanistan have been widely condemned and have sparked protests around the world. Human rights groups and activists have called these attacks an ongoing genocide against the Hazara community and are urging the United Nations and the international community to recognize it as such. Last year, Richard Bennett called for investigations into the attacks on Hazara and Sufi communities. He said that these attacks are “becoming increasingly systematic in nature and reflect elements of an organizational policy,” and that they may therefore constitute “crimes against humanity.”
