Eurasianet reported on January 10 that Taliban-linked media outlet Almirsad claimed that the second Kerman suicide bomber attacker was also Tajik.
On its X account, Almirsad reportedly deflected blame while discussing interest of the Islamic State – Khorasan Province (ISIS–K), a regional branch of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group active in South-Central Asia, primarily Afghanistan, interest in recruiting Tajiks for suicide attacks. They report arresting Tajik citizens planning attacks inside the country but say that their enlistment and training with ISIS-K all took place outside of Afghanistan. Almirsad accused Tajikistan of becoming “a new hub for [ISIS-K] production,” adding that this “poses a significant threat to the security and stability of the region and the world” and “many of its citizens have been involved in attacks in Afghanistan, Iran, and [elsewhere].”
Eurasianet notes that the fact that another Tajik militant was involved in ISIS-K’s latest major external attack is indicative of the branch’s increasingly ambitious geographical vision and success in attracting militants from Afghanistan’s northern neighbors.
At least 91 people were killed and 284 others, including women and children, wounded in twin blasts that occurred at a memorial for top commander Qassem Soleimani in the Iranian city of Kerman on the evening of January 3. The first blast was about 700 meters from the tomb and the second was a kilometer away.
The memorial was marking the fourth anniversary of the death of Qassem Soleimani, one of the most powerful military commanders in Iran, who was assassinated by a U.S. drone in Iraq on January 3, 2020.
Soleimani was buried in his hometown of Kerman after a funeral that drew millions of mourners across Iran.
IRNA reported on January 4 that “the Daesh (Daesh is the acronym for the group's full Arabic name, al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham) terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the attacks in Iran’s southeastern city of Kerman.”
Speaking in a TV program late on (January 6, Kerman Prosecutor Mahdi Bakhshi said that all perpetrators of the Kerman terrorist attacks were arrested, IRNA reported on January 7.
More than 60 bombs have been discovered in other provinces, Bakhshi was cited as saying.
The Kerman attack is reportedly not the first time ISIS-K tapped its Central Asian jihadist contingent to commit acts of violence outside of its local Afghanistan-Pakistan zone of operations or even against Iran itself. ISIS-K has targeted the Islamic Republic and sites of significance to Shia Muslims in the past. Two attacks, less than a year apart, took aim at the Shah Cheragh shrine in Shiraz.
In August, a gunman entered the Shah Cheragh shrine and fatally shot one parishioner and injured three others. Iran credited the assault to ISIS-K, and reports claimed that 10 people, all foreign nationals, had been arrested in relation to the attack. An earlier attack occurred in October 2022 that claimed the lives of 13 people and injured 40 others. The shooters in both incidents were reportedly ISIS-K-linked and from Tajikistan.
