ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack on a Sikh temple in Afghanistan that killed a member of the community and a Taliban fighter. The group, the attack Hz. He said it was carried out in retaliation for insulting Mohammed.
The statements of the spokesperson of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, referring to the relationship between the prophet and his young wife, triggered a wave of protests in many Muslim countries.
In a message posted on the propaganda site Amaq, ISIS said the targets of Saturday’s attack were Hindus and Sikhs, as well as “apostates” as an “act of support for the Messenger of God” protecting them.
ISIS said one of its fighters “entered the temple of Hindu and Sikh polytheists in Kabul after killing the guard and opened fire on the pagans with machine guns and grenades.”
Two members of the Sikh community were killed and seven injured on Saturday after the attack. The spokesperson said that fighters from the Taliban forces rushed to the scene and one of them died.
“Two of the attackers died during the response,” Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul Nafi Takor said in a statement. Said. Abdul Nafi Takor added that a bomb-laden vehicle exploded near the temple a few minutes after the attack and there were no casualties.
“I heard gunshots and explosions from the Gurdwara,” Sikh temple Gurnam Singh, the leader of this religious community in Kabul, told AFP.
“We usually have a few Sikh devotees who come to the temple to pray at this time of the morning.” After the attack, a fire broke out.
Videos posted on social media show a column of black smoke rising above the site, and gunshots are heard. Afghanistan, an almost entirely Muslim country, has about 200 Sikhs, up from half a million in the 1970s.
victims of attack
In recent years, the Afghan Sikh community has been the target of several attacks. The deadliest was in March 2020, when gunmen raided a temple in Kabul, killing at least 25 people. The Islamic State jihadist group claimed responsibility for the attack.
ISIS attacked this minority in a suicide attack that killed 19 people in Jalalabad in the east of the country in July 2018. Forty years of war, poverty and discrimination led to the exodus of the Afghan Sikh community.
After the Taliban came to power in Kabul in August 2021, nearly a hundred of them went into exile. The number of attacks, often targeting minority religious communities, has declined in the country since the arrival of the Taliban.
But in late April, during the month of Ramadan, and again in late May, a series of bombings hit the country that killed dozens. ISIS claimed responsibility for most of it.
The Taliban are trying to minimize the threat from IS’s regional arm, the Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K), and have been waging a years-long war against the group.
They also increased the number of raids, especially in Nangarhar province (east) and arrested hundreds of men accused of being members of the group.
source: Noticias
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