On Saturday, a series of rockets struck Kabul, which resulted in one dead and one injured. This has been the second such attack on the Afghan capital.
“Four rockets were fired from the Labe Jar neighbourhood of Kabul,” the spokesperson for the Ministry of Interior, Tariq Arian told reporters, adding that two landed near Kabul airport.
No group has claimed the attack so far, and the Afghan Taliban categorically denied involvement in the attack. Most of the rockets struck the eastern part of the capital, early this morning, confirmed the Kabul Police.
In a similar attack on November 21, eight people were killed when 23 rockets hit Kabul in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group.
Violence has surged across the region in recent months, with several deadly attacks carried out in Kabul, and the recent attack on a seminary in Peshawar, Pakistan. The Taliban and the governments of the USA and Afghanistan have been engaged in peace talks since September 12 in Qatar, and the Taliban have denied involvement in offensives within Afghanistan. Most of these attacks point towards a new and heightened presence of ISIS in the region.
Apart from the November rocket attack, IS claimed two deadly assaults in Kabul. Those attacks targeted educational centres in the capital that killed mostly students, including one on Kabul University that saw gunmen spraying classrooms with bullets, and the other at an after-school tuition centre.
Authorities blamed the attacks on educational centres on the Haqqani network, an affiliate of the Taliban.
The recent rise in the violence in Afghanistan has called the US move to hastily withdraw into question. In November, the Pentagon said it would withdraw a further 2,000 troops out of Afghanistan, speeding up the timeline established in a February agreement between Washington and the Taliban that envisions a full withdrawal by May 2021.
The deal also stipulates that the insurgents will not target key cities in the country, although Afghan authorities have blamed them for such attacks, even when other groups have publicly claimed responsibility.
