Kabul, Jul 2 (DIN NEWS)<\/b> The Islamic State group today claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in eastern Afghanistan that killed at least 19 people, mostly Sikhs and Hindus.<\/p>\n
The bomber targeted a delegation from the minority communities as it was travelling to the governor’s residence in the eastern city of Jalalabad yesterday for a meeting with President Ashraf Ghani.<\/p>\n
Avtar Singh Khalsa, a longtime leader of the Sikh community, was among those killed. Another 20 people were wounded.<\/p>\n
In a statement released today, the IS said it had targeted a group of “polytheists”.<\/p>\n
Sikhs and Hindus face discrimination in the conservative Muslim country and have been targeted by Islamic extremists in the past, leading many to emigrate.<\/p>\n
The community numbered more than 80,000 in the 1970s, but today only around 1,000 remain. The UN mission to Afghanistan condemned the attack in a statement, saying, “the architects of this appalling crime must be brought to justice.”<\/p>\n
The UN also condemned an attack late Saturday in which militants killed three night watchmen outside a school and beheaded two of them before torching the building. That attack was also claimed by the Islamic State group.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kabul, Jul 2 (DIN NEWS) The Islamic State group today claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in eastern Afghanistan that killed at least 19 people, mostly Sikhs and Hindus. The bomber targeted a delegation from the minority communities as it was travelling to the governor’s residence in the eastern city of Jalalabad yesterday for a meeting with President Ashraf Ghani. Avtar Singh Khalsa, a longtime leader of the Sikh community, was among those killed. Another 20 people were wounded. In a statement released today, the IS said it had targeted…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14425,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14422"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14422"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14424,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14422\/revisions\/14424"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}