Zabihullah Mujahid, the spokesperson for the Taliban government said that two high-ranking regional members of the Islamic State group were killed in separate operations by Taliban security forces in Afghanistan in recent weeks, AP News reported.
Qari Fateh, the intelligence and operations chief for the terrorist group, was killed during a raid in Kabul over the weekend, while Ijaz Amin Ahingar, another senior leader, was killed in a separate operation earlier this month.
In addition to these killings, several other IS/Daesh members have been detained in recent days, including foreign nationals involved in planning deadly attacks.
Just hours prior to the release of a report by the United States indicating that there may be as many as 3,000 Islamic State fighters conducting terrorist activities in Afghanistan, Mujahid announced that Qari Fateh had been responsible for orchestrating a series of recent attacks against diplomatic missions, mosques, and other targets in Kabul.
“The criminal was served justice last night for his brutal actions at the hands of IEA [Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan] special forces during a complex operation in the Kher Khana residential area [in Kabul],” Mujahid said, as quoted by VOA.
According to Anadolu Agency, last December, an attack was carried out on Pakistan’s embassy in Kabul, which resulted in injuries to the security guard of Pakistan’s chargé d’affaires to Afghanistan, Ubaid Ur Rehman Nizamani, who survived the attack.
In January of this year, Mujahid claimed that Taliban Forces had killed eight militants affiliated with Daesh/ISIS, who was responsible for attacks on Pakistan’s embassy and a hotel housing Chinese nationals.
In September 2022, a suicide attack targeting the Russian Embassy in Kabul resulted in the deaths of two embassy staff members and a civilian, with ten others sustaining injuries.
Last year, Daesh/ISIS carried out a series of attacks on religious seminaries, mosques, educational institutions, and foreign missions belonging to the Taliban in Kabul and other parts of Afghanistan.
The US continues to have doubts about the efficacy of Taliban counterterrorism efforts and labels IS-K as a “dangerous” branch of Islamic State.
The 2021 Country Reports on Terrorism were released on Monday by the U.S. State Department, which noted that IS and other regionally targeted terror organizations kept “an active presence” and carried out terrorist activities in Afghanistan.
“ISIS-K remained a resilient enemy with roughly 2,000 to 3,000 fighters in the country, although precise estimates are hard to determine,” the report said. “Although the Taliban committed to preventing terrorist groups from using Afghanistan to stage attacks against the United States or others, the extent of its ability and willingness to prevent AQ [al-Qaida] and ISIS-K from mounting external operations remained unclear,” it added.
