Seven Shias, Female Doctor Killed in Afghanistan

Date: 05 March 2021 - 21:25

News ID: ۸۸۲۲۷

JALALABAD (Dispatches) – A female doctor was killed in a bomb blast in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad and at least seven Shia civilians were shot and killed by a group of gunmen overnight in the country’s east, provincial officials said on Thursday.
Juma Gul Hemat, the provincial police chief in Nangarhar, said the victims of the shooting incident were workers at a plaster factory in the Sorkh Rod district. Police arrested four suspects, he added.
The laborers were all from Afghanistan’s minority Shia Hazara community, according to Farid Khan, a spokesman for the provincial police chief. Some had come from the capital Kabul, as well as central Bamyan and northern Balkh provinces, to work in the factory.
Ajmal Omar, a member of Nangarhar provincial council member, said on Thursday that the migrant Hazara laborers had their hands bound behind their backs and been shot to death late Wednesday.
The deadly incident took place almost 20 kilometers from the eastern city of Jalalabad near the Pakistan border, an area where a large number of militants are believed to have influence, including the Taliban militant group and a local affiliate of the Daesh group.
The Hazara community on both sides of the border has suffered decades of persecution and attacks by violent militant groups operating across the troubled region.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for that attack, but Daesh terrorists have declared war on the Shia and frequently single out the Hazaras.
Meanwhile, a doctor was killed after a magnetic bomb attached to the vehicle she was travelling in exploded, according to a spokesman from the governor’s office in the eastern Nangarhar province.
"She was commuting in a rickshaw when the bomb went off,” the spokesman told the AFP news agency.
The doctor was on her way to work at a provincial hospital’s maternity ward. A child was also injured by the explosion.
Another spokesman from the provincial hospital also confirmed the incident and the numbers of dead and injured people.
The act of aggression came two days after three female media workers who worked at a private TV station were gunned down in Jalalabad in separate shooting incidents that were just minutes apart.
In another incident in the country, at least 14 people were killed after an avalanche hit a gold mine in a remote area of northern Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban, officials said Friday.
Farid Nekfar, who heads the disaster management department of Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province, said efforts were ongoing to recover at least two bodies after the avalanche on Thursday afternoon.
"We are in contact with the locals and emergency teams. So far 12 dead bodies have been recovered from under the avalanche,” Nekfar told AFP.  "Unfortunately the area is under the control of the insurgents.”
Nek Mohammad Nazari, a spokesman for Badakhshan’s governor, gave a slightly higher toll, saying 15 people had been killed.