Suicide bombing in Kabul kills Taliban refugee minister
By Masoud Popalzai and Catherine Nicholls, CNN
(CNN) — The Taliban’s refugee minister was killed in a suicide bombing carried out by ISIS in the Afghan capital Kabul on Wednesday, according to officials.
Khalil Haqqani is the uncle of current Taliban Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani, who leads the powerful Haqqani network, a division of the wider Taliban organization.
On Wednesday, a suicide bomber disguised himself as a visitor to the Ministry of Refugees compound, detonating his bomb as Haqqani was signing paperwork, a ministry spokesperson told CNN. Six other people were killed, Reuters reported, citing his nephew.
In a statement posted by the Taliban, a spokesperson said that the group received the news of Haqqani’s death with “profound grief.”
The Taliban blamed ISIS for the “cowardly attack,” calling the terror group a “faction that deceitfully professes Islam while declaring other Muslims to be infidels.” ISIS is yet to claim the attack.
Haqqani is the most high-profile casualty of a bombing in Afghanistan since the Taliban returned to power three years ago.
“We lost a very brave Mujahid,” his nephew Anas Haqqani told Reuters, using the Taliban’s term for its fighters. “We will never forget him and his sacrifice.”
In 2011, the United States classified Khalil Haqqani as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, offering a reward of up to $5 million for information related to him. He is also on the United Nations Security Council’s 1988 Sanctions List.
The Haqqani network has carried out a string of major attacks during the country’s war and tensions have emerged between it and the Taliban.
Designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the US and encompassed under the Taliban umbrella, the network maintains its own distinct lines of operation, according to the Institute for the Study of War.
The tensions between the Haqqani network and the rest of the Taliban are largely due to differences in governing strategy, according to the UK-based think tank Chatham House.
While ministers in Kabul appear keen to engage with the international community, Taliban leaders in Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second city, are unwilling to liaise with outsiders, Chatham House says.
Sirajuddin Haqqani even reached out to the West to ask for border force training, it claims, while leaders in Kandahar fear that cooperation with western countries will antagonize their supporters.
This story has been updated.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
