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05-04-2023
By SJA Jafri + Bureau Report
KABUL/ BALKH/ ISLAMABAD: Taliban forces have killed six members of the ISIL armed group (ISIS) in Afghanistan’s northern Balkh province during an overnight raid, a Taliban spokesman said on Tuesday.
The raid comes as the Taliban rulers crack down on the regional affiliate of the ISIL group known as the Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP), which has carried out several deadly attacks in recent months killing dozens, including Balkh governor Mohammad Dawood Muzammil last month.
According to Mohammad Asif Waziri, a spokesman for the police chief in Balkh, the operation late on Monday night targeted an ISIL hideout in Nahri Shahi district. Six members of the armed group were killed, he added.
Muzammil was known for his resistance to ISIL in the area. The group has emerged as the biggest security threat to the Taliban, which took over Afghanistan in August 2021 after US-led foreign forces withdrew after 20 years of war.
A blast in January killed at least five people and injured dozens at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as employees streamed out of the building at the end of their work day.
The ISIL group has also claimed other recent attacks in Kabul, including a bombing near a checkpoint at the city’s military airport that killed and wounded several people and also an assault on a Kabul hotel in mid-December.
ISIL attacks in Afghanistan have often targeted the minority Shia communities, as well as foreigners and foreign interests.
The Taliban governor of Afghanistan’s Balkh province was killed on 9th of March 2023 inside his office in a suicide attack that was later claimed by the ISIL armed group.
The killing of Mohammad Dawood Muzammil, the provincial governor, on Thursday marked one of the highest-level attacks since the Taliban stormed back to power in 2021. A second person also died in the attack, police said.
“Two people, including Mohammad Dawood Muzammil, the governor of Balkh, have been killed in an explosion this morning,” police spokesman Asif Waziri said on Thursday.
Waziri said the blast happened on the second floor of his office in the provincial capital of Mazar-i-Sharif.
“It was a suicide attack. We don’t have information as to how the suicide bomber reached the office of the governor,” he said, adding that two people were also wounded.
The ISIL armed group claimed responsibility for the attack late on Thursday, the group’s Amaq agency reported.
The killing of Muzammil, known for his resistance to the ISIL (ISIS) in the area, came a day after he met top government officials visiting from capital Kabul.
Violence across Afghanistan dramatically dropped since the Taliban seized control, but the security situation has again deteriorated with ISIL claiming several deadly attacks. Authorities deployed extra security at the governorate and forbade journalists from taking photos, a correspondent of the AFP news agency reported from near the site of the blast.
Muzammil was “martyred in an explosion by the enemies of Islam”, tweeted Taliban government’s spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.
Muzammil was initially appointed governor of the eastern province of Nangarhar, where he led the fight against ISIL, before being moved to Balkh last year.
The ISIL has emerged as the biggest security challenge to the Taliban government since last year, carrying out attacks against Afghan civilians as well as foreigners and foreign interests.
