ISIS claims responsibility
Kabul: At least 25 worshippers were killed and eight others injured when heavily armed suicide bombers blasted their way into a prominent gurdwara on Wednesday in the heart of Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul, in one of the deadliest attacks on the minority Sikh community in the strife-torn country.
The Islamic State (IS) terror group, which has targeted Sikhs before in Afghanistan, claimed responsibility for the attack on the gurdwara in Shor Bazar area at about 07:45 (local time) as 150 worshippers were inside the building. “At least 25 people were killed and 8 others were wounded in the attack at Dharamshala, a Sikh worship place in Kabul,” TOLOnews quoted the Ministry of Interior as saying.
“All four suicide bombers who attacked Dharamshala, a Sikh worship area in PD1 of Kabul, were killed after nearly six hours of fighting.
Afghan special forces confirmed,” it said in a tweet. The ministry said in a statement that 80 people, including women and children, were rescued from the gurdwara.
Former president of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai strongly condemned the attack on the Sikh worship place and expressed his condolences to the victims’ families, the report said.
The ISIS terrorist group, which has targeted Sikhs before in Afghanistan, claimed responsibility for the latest attack.
The group issued a statement confirming that its members carried out the attack on Sikhs in Kabul city, Khaama Press News Agency reported. Photos from the blast scene showed security forces carrying wounded people away on stretchers. Some Afghan media outlets shared videos of the family members of victims waiting outside a city hospital in tears.
Police in Kabul said that at least 11 children were rescued from the gurdwara. Sikh lawmaker Nardendar Singh Khalsa told reporters that up to 150 people were praying inside the gurdwara when it came under attack. Khalsa, the only representative of the Sikh community in Afghanistan said he received a call from a worshipper inside the gurdwara, informing him about the attack. “I rushed over to help. There were about 150 worshippers inside the gurdwara at the time of the attack,” he was quoted as saying by the official Bakhtar News Agency.
In New Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was saddened by the attack on the gurdwara.
Meanwhile, the Islamic State Khorasan (ISKP) has claimed responsibility for the terror attack on a Gurudwara in central Kabul in which at least 25 members of the Sikh community were killed on Wednesday.
Sources said while one suicide bomber detonated himself at the entrance, three IS terrorists stormed the shrine in the Shorbazar area Wednesday. (Agencies)