A member of the Sikh community was killed and seven others were injured on Saturday in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, in the attack on a Sikh temple by armed men, according to the Ministry of Interior.
At around 6:30 a.m. (local time), armed men entered a Sikh temple in the west of the city, attacking pomegranate a keeperInterior Ministry spokesman Abdul Nafi Takor said in a statement.
A member of the Sikh community was killed and seven others were injured, according to the spokesperson.
Taliban fighters quickly intervened and one of them was killed, the spokesman said, adding that two assailants were killed.
A few minutes after the attack, a car bomb exploded near the temple, causing no casualties, also indicated Abdul Nafi Takor.
I heard gunshots and explosionsGurnam Singh, a leader of the Sikh community in Kabul, told AFP.
At this time of the morning, we have several Sikh devotees who come to pray at the templehe added.
The Sikh worshiper who was killed resided in the temple, like other members of the community.
He was taking a shower, the assailants heard and shot him twicetold AFP one of his relatives, Arijit Singh.
According to the Taliban, worshipers were able to escape through a back door of the building.
A fire broke out after the attack. Videos on social media showed a plume of black smoke rising above the site and gunfire could be heard.
The ceiling and the walls of the prayer hall were partly burned. Bullet marks and traces of blood were also visible, AFP journalists found at the site.
Windows of houses were blown out by the explosion of the car bomb, it was also noted.
Other Sikh temples in Kabul have been closed for security.
A cowardly attackaccording to an Indian minister
Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar condemned in a tweet the cowardly attack of Saturday.
This comes a few days after the visit of an Indian delegation to Kabul, to discuss with the Taliban government about the humanitarian aid brought by Delhi to Afghanistan.
The possibility of reopening the Indian embassy in the Afghan capital has also been raised.
New Delhi, which had close ties with the previous US-backed Afghan government, closed its mission in Kabul when the Taliban seized power on August 15.
About 200 Sikhs live in Afghanistan – an almost entirely Muslim country – compared to around half a million in the 1970s.
In recent years, the Afghan Sikh community has been the target of several attacks.
The deadliest took place in March 2020, when armed men stormed a temple in Kabul, killing at least two people. It was claimed by the jihadist group Islamic State (IS).
IS had already targeted this minority in a suicide attack in July 2018 in Jalalabad, in the east of the country, killing 19 people.
Forty years of war, poverty and discrimination have caused the exodus of the Afghan Sikh community.
After the fundamentalists came to power in August, nearly a hundred went into exile.
The number of attacks, often targeting minority religious communities, has decreased in the country since the arrival of the Taliban.
However, a series of bomb attacks, in which dozens of people were killed, hit the country at the end of April, during the month of Ramadan, and then at the end of May.
Most have been claimed by IS.
The Taliban are trying to minimize the threat from Islamic State-Khorasan (ISIS-K), the regional branch of ISIS, and are waging a ruthless fight against the group, which they have been fighting for years.
They multiplied raids, particularly in the eastern province of Nangarhar, and arrested hundreds of men accused of being part of it.
They have claimed for a few months to have defeated EI-K, but analysts believe that the extremist group still constitutes the main security challenge for the new Afghan power.
France Media Agency
Source: Radio-Canada
