KABUL: Taliban security forces killed six members of the militant Islamic State group in an overnight operation in the Afghan capital, a spokesman for the ruling group’s administration said on Saturday.

The IS members killed in the raid on their hideout were involved in two major attacks in recent weeks, one on a city mosque and the other on a tutoring institute in which dozens of female students were killed, said the spokesman, Qari Yusuf Ahmadi.

“They were the attackers of the Wazir Akbar Khan mosque and also ... of Kaaj Institute,” said Ahmadi, who said one Taliban security force member was killed in the operation.

The blast at the female section of the Kaaj Institute education centre on Sept 30 killed 53 people, most of them girls and young women.

Taliban claim men involved in two major attacks in recent weeks

On Sept 23, at least seven people were killed and more than 40 wounded in blast near a mosque in Wazir Akbar Khan, a heavily fortified neighbourhood once home to a “Green Zone” of embassies and foreign force bases.

On Sept 30, a suicide bomber blew himself up next to women at a gender-segregated study hall in Kabul packed with hundreds of students sitting a practice test for university admissions.

At least 53 people, including 46 girls and young women, were killed in the attack, according to the United Nations.Government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said Taliban forces conducted an operation in Kabul on Friday night in which six IS fighters were killed and two others were captured.

“All the killed IS members were criminals who were involved in recent explosions in Wazir Akbar Khan mosque, Kaaj Educational Centre and some other crimes against civilians,” Mujahid said in a statement on Twitter.

On Sept 23, at least seven people were killed when a car bomb exploded in front of Wazir Akbar Khan mosque near Kabul’s fortified former Green Zone, which housed several embassies before the Taliban seized power last August. That attack has also not yet been claimed by any group.

While overall violence has significantly dropped across Afghanistan since the war ended with the Taliban’s return to power, there have been regular bomb attacks in Kabul and other cities. Several of these attacks have been claimed by IS, and the group has previously carried out deadly assaults in the capital’s Dasht-e-Barchi area, where the educational centre is located.

The district is home to the historically oppressed minority Hazara community, a regular target of IS, which considers them heretics.

Taliban officials claim the IS has been defeated in Afghanistan, but experts say the group is the main security challenge for the country’s current rulers.

Since the Taliban took over in 2021, they say they have focused on securing the country after decades of war.

However, a series of blasts have rocked the capital and other urban areas in recent months and the United Nations has said security is deteriorating.

The Afghan affiliate of IS, known as Islamic State Khorasan, after an old name of the region, are enemies of the Taliban. Fighters loyal to IS first appeared in eastern Afghanistan in 2014, and later made inroads in other areas.

Published in Dawn, October 23rd, 2022