CAIRO (Dispatches) – Daesh claimed a bomb attack in the Afghan capital Kabul on Friday which killed at least seven people in a crowd gathered to commemorate a political leader from the mainly Shia Hazara minority.
The group gave no evidence for its claim, which it published online via its Amaq news agency.
At least seven people were killed and seven more injured in a bomb attack near a Shia mosque in the Afghan capital, Kabul.
The casualties were caused after an attacker, who had been stopped at a nearby security checkpoint, set off an explosive device he was carrying, said Nasrat Rahimi, a deputy Interior Ministry spokesman.
The fatalities comprised one policeman and six civilians, while the wounded were all civilians, AFP reported.
Rahimi said the assailant apparently sought to target crowds comprising members of Afghanistan’s Shia Hazara community. They had gathered to commemorate Abdul Ali Mazari, a Hazara political leader killed by the Taliban militant group in 1995.
No group has so far claimed responsibility for the deadly assault.
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 Afghanistan in the past, prompting demonstrations and sit-ins in Kabul and elsewhere.
Last December, dozens were killed in an attack on a Shia cultural center claimed by the Daesh terror group, which has been growing in size and expanding its operations in the country over the past two years.
Daesh terrorists and Taliban militants also massacred dozens of civilians, mostly Shia Hazaras, during an attack on a village in Afghanistan’s northern province of Sar-e Pol last August.