KABUL (Reuters) – Taliban security forces killed six Daesh members in an operation in the Afghan capital, Kabul, a spokesman for the ruling group’s administration said on Saturday.
Daesh members killed in the raid on their hideout were involved in two major attacks in recent weeks, one on a city mosque and the other on a tutoring institute in which dozens of female students were killed, said the spokesman, Qari Yusuf Ahmadi.
“They were the attackers of the Wazir Akbar Khan mosque and also ... of Kaaj Institute,” said Ahmadi, who said one Taliban security force member was killed in the operation.
No group claimed responsibility for either attack.
The blast at the female section of the Kaaj Institute education center on Sept. 30 killed 53 people, most of them girls and young women.
On Sept. 23, at least seven people were killed and more than 40 wounded in blast near a mosque in Wazir Akbar Khan, a heavily fortified neighborhood once home to a “Green Zone” of embassies and foreign force bases.
Since the Taliban took over in 2021, they say they have focused on securing the country after decades of war.
However, a series of blasts have rocked the capital and other urban areas in recent months and the United Nations has said security is deteriorating.
The Afghan affiliate of Daesh, known as Daesh Khorasan, after an old name of the region, are enemies of the Taliban.
Militants loyal to Daesh first appeared in eastern Afghanistan in 2014, and later made inroads in other areas.
The Daesh terrorist group has a history of launching attacks against the Hazara community in Afghanistan in recent years.
The Hazara community, the poorest of the country’s ethnic groups, accounts for about 22 percent of Afghanistan’s population. Its members have been targeted in several large-scale kidnappings and killings across the country in the past.
In May last year, at least 85 people – mainly girl students – were killed and about 300 wounded when three bombs exploded near their school in the Shia-dominated Dasht-e-Barchi neighborhood of Kabul.
In October 2020, Daesh admitted to attacking an educational center in the same area that killed 24 people, including students.