The Taliban has claimed arresting a member of the Islamic State – Khurasan Province (IS-K) who was involved in plotting several deadly attacks, including the one, which killed Taliban governor in Balkh and attacks against Shiites, Kabul Now reported on April 4. The man has reportedly admitted that he was recruited to the IS-K in Iran.
According to Kabul Now, in a video released by the Taliban’s intelligence agency, General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI), the detainee is a young man, who was identified as Aynuddin, also known with the pseudonym Mohammad, from Saighan district in the central Bamyan province.
According to him, he was recruited to Daesh nearly two and a half years back in Iran.
The alleged IS-K member also admits and explains how he and several others plotted the suicide attack, which killed the powerful Taliban’s Balkh governor, Mohammad Dawood Muzammil, last month.
The IS-K member said they had sent a Tajikistani national who managed to carry out the suicide attack within half an hour and killed the Taliban governor.
In addition to the governor, two others were reportedly also killed in the attack.
Moreover, he also admits plotting attacks on a bus full of the Shiite’s community members, a Shiite Mosque, and the attack on a gathering of local journalists in Tebyan Cultural Center in Mazar-e-Sharif, the capital of the northern Balkh province.
According to the Taliban’s GDI, the man has been also involved in plotting an attack on al-Jihad madrassa in the northern Samangan province which killed at least 19 students and wounded more than 20 others in November 2022.
Recall, the suicide bombing attack, in which the Balkh governor Mohammad Dawood Muzammil was killed, took place Balkh’s capita, Mazar-e Sharif, on March 9.
Media reports say Muzammil was killed inside his office in a suicide attack that was later claimed by the ISIL terror group.
The killing of Mohammad Dawood Muzammil reportedly marked one of the highest-level attacks since the Taliban stormed back to power in 2021. A second person also died in the attack.
The ISIL terror group claimed responsibility for the attack, the group’s Amaq agency reported. , ISIL said one of its soldiers had managed to enter the building and detonate his suicide belt.
The Voice of America (VOA) says Muzammil is the second-most senior Taliban official killed since the militants returned to power in 2021 as the United States and NATO troops left the country after two decades of war.
Last December, a car bombing killed the Taliban police chief of northeastern Badakhshan province. That attack was claimed by the Islamic State terror group's Afghan affiliate, known as Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K).
According to VOA, Muzammil had led the fight against ISIL in his previous posting as governor of the eastern province of Nangarhar. He was moved to Balkh last October.
Contrary to the Taliban’s repeated claim of suppressing the IS-K, this militant group, often referred to as Daesh, has recently intensified attacks in Afghanistan. The violence has killed hundreds of people, including minority Shiite community members and Taliban officials as well as clerics. Last month alone, the IS-K claimed responsibility for a total of three attacks in Balkh and in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul.
