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ISLAMABAD (AP) — Islamic State militants killed 14 people in a Shiite-majority area in central Afghanistan in one of the deadliest attacks in the country this year.
The militant group claimed responsibility for the shooting, which took place on Thursday and targeted a group of minority Hazaras traveling between the provinces of Ghor and Daikundi. Six other people were wounded in the attack.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the shootings before the Taliban authorities in Kabul acknowledged the attack. The IS said its fighters used a machine gun in the assault, and claimed inflicting a higher death toll than the Taliban later reported.
The Iranian news agency IRNA quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani as saying the gunmen targeted people welcoming Afghan Shiites who were returning home from visiting shrines in Iraq. He called for immediate action to punish those behind the crime.
The Islamic State groups affiliate in Afghanistan is a major rival to the Taliban and has challenged their authority by attacking schools, hospitals, mosques and Shiite areas over the past three years.
In the village of Bandar in Daikundi province on Friday, mourners circled around two rows of bodies of the victims laid out and covered in multi-colored fabrics.
A relative of one of the victims, Reza Ali, said the government was responsible for security and that the situation should have been avoided.
“We are worried about our wives and children being attacked in the city or at school, like it happened on the highway," he said.
The Taliban’s chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid strongly condemned the attack, describing it as a “barbaric action” and said authorities would protect people and their property.
“We are also making serious efforts to search for the perpetrators and bring them to justice,” Mujahid added.
The U.N. mission in Afghanistan expressed its “condolences to the families of those killed” in a post on the social media platform X and called for an "investigation to hold those responsible to account.”
Earlier this month, an IS suicide bomber detonated his explosive-laden vest at a prosecutor’s office in the capital of Kabul. In May, a booby-trapped motorcycle exploded in northeastern Badakhshan province and killed at least three police officers who were part of a poppy eradication campaign.
A U.N.-appointed rights expert for Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, said he was alarmed by the spate of attacks claimed by the IS.
The “appalling killings” of the Shiite Hazaras bore the hallmarks of international crimes, said Bennett, whom the Taliban have barred from Afghanistan.
Hazaras make up around 9% of Afghanistan's population of about 40 million people and are mostly Shiite Muslims, despised by Sunni Muslim radicals like the Islamic State group.