Taliban officials said Thursday a suicide bomb explosion outside a ministry building in the Afghan capital of Kabul killed at least one person and injured several others.
The blast occurred when security guards at the entrance to the Ministry of Urban Development and Housing intercepted and killed a suicide bomber, an Interior Ministry spokesperson told VOA.
Abdul Mateen Qani confirmed the casualties, saying a member of Taliban security was killed, and three others were wounded in the ensuing explosion.
No immediate claims of responsibility were made, but suspicions fell on a regional Islamic State group affiliate, Islamic State-Khorasan, or IS-K.
The attack came two days after IS-K took credit for a suicide bombing outside a bank in the northeastern Afghan city of Kunduz that killed at least five people and wounded several others. Multiple sources reported that the victims of the Tuesday blast were predominantly Taliban security personnel who had assembled to collect their salaries.
IS-K has plotted repeated high-profile attacks since the Taliban retook control of the country in 2021. The violence has killed hundreds of people, including senior Taliban leaders, religious figures and members of the Afghan Shiite community.
The back-to-back bombings this week followed the Taliban’s renewed claims that their security forces nearly eliminated IS-K presence in the country, rendering the group incapable of posing a threat within or beyond Afghan borders.
The United Nations and independent critics remain skeptical about the Taliban’s assertions. U.N. counterterrorism officials warned during a Security Council meeting on Monday that IS-K is one of the “most dangerous” Islamic State branches and “continued to pose a significant threat in Afghanistan, the region and beyond.”
