Afghan IS group claims sticky bomb attacks in western Kabul

The dead included two employees of Afghanistan’s state-run film company, a colleague said on Sunday.

In a statement issued late on Saturday, Afghanistan’s IS affiliate said its operatives blew up two minivans carrying “disbeliever Shiites” using sticky bombs.

Sticky bombs slapped on to cars trapped in Kabul’s chaotic traffic are the newest weapons terrorising Afghans in the increasingly lawless nation.

Film director Sahra Karimi said in a tweet on Sunday that Fatima Mohammadi and Tayiba Musavi, who worked for the Afghan Film Organisation, were among the six killed in the first attack. Their families identified their burned bodies in the forensic hospital of Kabul, she said.

Ms Karimi said the pair were animators working on a film for children and had been returning home when they were attacked.

Saturday’s attacks targeted minivans on the same road, about 1.25 miles (2km) apart, in a neighbourhood in western Kabul.

The second bombing took place in front of Muhammad Ali Jinnah hospital, where a majority of Covid-19 patients are admitted, killing one and wounding four.

In some west Kabul neighbourhoods populated mostly by members of the minority Hazara ethnic group, just going out for errands can be dangerous.

The Islamic State group has carried out similar bombings in the area, including four attacks on four minivans earlier this month that killed at least 18 people.

Hazaras are mostly Shiite Muslims. Shiites are a minority in mainly Sunni Afghanistan and the IS affiliate has declared war against them.

An attack on a Kabul school on May 8 killed nearly 100 people, all of them members of the Hazara ethnic minority and most of them young girls just leaving class.