Islamic State claims Pakistani consulate attack in Afghanistan

Afghan security forces rush to the blast site near the Pakistani consulate in eastern Afghan town of Jalalabad in Nangarhar province, January 13, 2016.

A senior Afghan police officer said on Tuesday that Pakistan army officers were behind the attack on the Indian consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif.

Nine civilians, including seven children, were killed in August 2013 when suicide bombers targeted the Indian consulate in Jalalabad.

A suicide bomber blew himself up in which two were killed after being prevented from joining a queue of people seeking visas to Pakistan.

Wednesday’s attack on the Pakistani consulate has stoked “fears over the spread of the ultra-radical movement in Afghanistan”, notes The Sydney Morning Herald.

However, the Afghan officials said all assailants were shot dead by the security forces during the stand off which lasted for nearly three hours.

The scene of the attack is close to a hospital and schools as well as the Indian Consulate.

The Congress Party also launched a full-fledged attack on Islamabad after the Afghan Police confirmation and said this has only bolstered India’s assertion.

There was no claim of responsibility for the blast in Jalalabad, which is the main trade gateway to the Khyber Pass and Pakistan.

It was not immediately clear who carried out the attack, which follows a bomb near the Indian mission last week. The Foreign Office here has said officials of the consulate general are safe.

And the group is still made up mostly of fighters who simply switched allegiance from the Taliban or other insurgent groups, so they have not yet significantly increased pressure on Afghan forces, he said. The Islamic State cell has fought both the Taliban and the government in Nangarhar over the past year, carving out an ever-bigger area of control, officials say.

“One of the three terrorists approached a patrolling police vehicle and blew his suicide jacket up, killing himself and six others including four policemen aboard the auto and two civilian passersby”, the police officer told Xinhua, but refused to be identified, saying authorized officials would talk to media.

ISIL-Khorasan (ISIL-K), which announced its formation on January 10, 2015, is based in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region and is composed primarily of former members of Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban.