Kabul: The Taliban announced on Monday that they had eliminated an ISIS cell in Kabul, hours after five people were murdered in a suspected IS attack on a mosque. According to Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban’s main spokesman, fighters carried out the operation in the north of Kabul on Sunday evening. He stated the battle went on for several hours and that the sound of weapons kept him awake all night.
The raid came just hours after a devastating attack at the Eid Gah mosque, which was held in honor of Taliban spokesman Mujahid’s mother, who died last week. A government cultural commission official, who did not want to be identified, said that five people were killed and 11 were injured, with civilians and Taliban fighters among the victims.
The explosive was put at the mosque’s entrance and detonated as mourners were leaving after paying their respects to Mujahid and his family, according to the official. The inquiry is still ongoing, Mujahid said on Monday, but “early intelligence indicated that Daesh-linked organizations may have carried out the attack.”
Both the Taliban and ISIS’s Afghanistan affiliate, ISIS-Khorasan Province, or IS-K, are extreme Sunni Islamist militant groups. However, they disagree on matters of religion and strategy, which has resulted in bloodshed between them.