KABUL (SW) – The deadly terrorist attack on a Sikh community temple in Kabul has been widely condemned.
At around 6:30 a.m. on Saturday, the Karte Parwan area of Kabul witnessed several explosions. The blasts targeted a Hindu shrine in the area. The attack was carried out by a number of unidentified gunmen.
Hours after the attack began, Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul Nafi Takur said in a statement that gunmen had hurled a hand grenade at the guards before entering the shrine, setting it on fire and wounding two guards.
According to him, the attackers tried to detonate a car bomb in the crowd, but it exploded before reaching the target.
Meanwhile, Cheran Singh Khalsa, the Sikh and Hindu community representative, told Salam Watandar that the assailants entered the temple and blew themselves up inside the temple. He called on the government of the Islamic Emirate to ensure the security of religious minorities in Afghanistan so that this does not happen again.
However, the Bakhtar state news agency reported the end of clashes between armed assailants and Islamic Emirate forces at the shrine after the clearing operation, and wrote that the attack on the Hindu shrine in Kabul ended with the death of all the attackers.
According to Bakhtar, one Hindu citizen was killed and seven others were injured in the attack. Bakhtar added that one of the forces of the Islamic Emirate was also killed during the clean-up operation.
But witnesses say the death toll from the attack is higher than announced. According to Matiullah, one of the witnesses of the incident, the number of dead and wounded in this attack was 30 to 40.
He said the sound of the explosion was so horrifying that all the glass around the temple was shattered. On the other hand, Jabbar, another witness to the incident, said that the temple witnessed four explosions in a row.
The attack on a Hindu shrine in Kabul has provoked widespread national and international reactions. The Office of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) has strongly condemned the attack and called for an immediate end to the attacks on civilians.
UNAMA tweeted that all minorities, including Sikhs, Hazaras and Sufis, should be protected in Afghanistan.
EU Special Representative for Afghanistan Thomas Nicholson also said that attacks on civilians should be stopped and minorities should be protected. He stressed the need to support the rights of all ethnic and religious groups (minority and majority). “This is very far from the reality of Afghanistan today,” Nicholson said.
Meanwhile, the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has issued a statement reacting to the attack in Kabul. The ministry expressed concern about the attack and said they were closely monitoring the situation.
Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry has also called the attack a terrorist act and condemned it. Pakistan’s ambassador to Kabul, Mansour Ahmad Khan, said in a statement issued by his foreign ministry that Pakistan once again condemned terrorism in all its forms.
“Pakistan is seriously concerned about the recent wave of terrorist attacks on religious sites in Afghanistan,” he added. Referring to yesterday’s attack on a mosque in Kunduz, the Pakistani ambassador to Kabul said the terrorist acts were “absolutely disgusting”.
“Afghan Hindus and Sikhs are the main inhabitants of this land,” Anarkali Hunaryar, a representative of the Sikh and Hindu communities in the former government’s House of Representatives, wrote on Twitter in response to today’s attack.
Similarly, former President Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah, former head of the peace council, have aldo condemned the attack.
Separately, a bomb blast near a mosque in the Imam Sahib district of Kunduz province has killed at least 12 people and injured 30 others. No group or individual has claimed responsibility for yesterday’s bombing in Kunduz and at the Sikh community temple in Kabul.
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