At least nineteen people, including ten members of the minority Sikh community were killed and around twenty others injured when a bomb blast struck the eastern city of Jalalabad in Afghanistan on Sunday.
According to a police report, the attack was caused by a suicide bomber in a busy market square, just metres away from the governor’s compound where President Ashraf Ghani was conducting business.
One of the Governor's spokesman Attaullah Khogyani told AFP that the attack was targeting a vehicle ferrying members of the Sikh community to meet the President.
Afghan rescuers shift a body of a victim from the scene of a suicide bomb attack, in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, 01 July 2018. Source: AAP Image/ EPA/GHULAMULLAH HABIBI
While no group has claimed immediate responsibility for the attack, government officials suspect the self-proclaimed 'Islamic State’ which has a strong foothold in the region was behind the assault.
Among the deceased was a long-time Sikh leader Avtar Singh Khalsa, who had planned to contest in the Parliamentary elections in October this year, representing the minority Sikhs and Hindus in the Muslim-majority nation.
Long-time Sikh leader Avtar Singh Khalsa dies in Afghan blast. Source: Twitter
The Indian embassy in Kabul condemned the attack and called for united action against terrorism.
Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh also took to twitter to extend his sympathies to the families of the victims.
Sikhs and Hindus have long suffered widespread discrimination and security threats from radical Islamic groups in Afghanistan who view them as outsiders, forcing many to seek asylum in India.
According to a TOLOnews investigation, the Sikh and Hindu population has significantly dwindled in numbers from what it once was. Today 1,000 people remain from a population that was a quarter of a million in the 1940s.
