Rise in Islamic State Khorasan deadly attacks could be sign of group’s growing strength in Afghanistan
Attacks by Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K) in Afghanistan have become more deadly since the withdrawal of NATO forces, with at least 346 civilians killed by the group since late August.
The insurgents carried out bombings in areas where previously they had little presence. A security expert told Sky News this could be a sign of the group’s growing strength.
Earlier this week, US Pentagon officials suggested ISIS-K intended to carry out attacks against the West and could have the ability to do so within six months.
The group is an affiliate of Islamic State based in South and Central Asia and are ideologically opposed to the Taliban’s nationalist view of Afghanistan, instead seeking to establish an Islamic State across the region.
During and after the US withdrawal, Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K) have carried out a suspected 21 attacks in Afghanistan.
The deadliest of these was on 26 August when a suicide bomb at Kabul’s main airport killed 170 civilians and 13 US marines.
Since then, there have been several ISIS-K attacks across Afghanistan, including seven between 18 September – 6 October that killed 18 people.
On 8 October an ISIS-K suicide bomber targeted a Hazara mosque in the northern city of Kunduz, killing at least 43 people.
The picture below shows the damage caused by the bomb inside the mosque.
Shortly after, between 8-12 October, five attacks in four days around Jalalabad, an ISIS-K stronghold, targeted both the Taliban and civil society activists.
A few days later on 15 October, CCTV captured two men attacking a Shia mosque in Kandahar, in the south of the country.
At least 47 people were killed in the suicide attack carried out when prayers were underway in the courtyard of the mosque.
The footage shows the attackers entering the mosque and detonating a device.
At least five further attacks have occurred since the 15 October mosque attack in Kandahar, meaning around 408 people have been killed by ISIS-K in Afghanistan since August 26, including 346 civilians.
This level of ISIS-K attacks is not unprecedented. In 2018 they were responsible for more deaths globally than all but three other terrorist groups that year. Operations by the Afghan government and NATO forces helped reduce the threat throughout 2019 and 2020.
But now the number of attacks is rising again, with civilian casualties in October 2021 alone higher than in the first nine months of 2020.
Many of these attacks have taken place in the east of the country in Nangarhar province, where ISIS-K has a strong presence.
The Taliban has retaliated, with reports of people being dragged from their homes and killed in Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar, for allegedly being ISIS-K members or supporters.
The worsening situation is only exacerbating the existing humanitarian crisis within Afghanistan. The UN has warned that without urgent humanitarian relief the country is on a “countdown to catastrophe”.
It already has one of the largest populations internationally facing acute hunger and it is estimated that up to a million children are at risk of starvation.
What has changed since the withdrawal?
The flurry of attacks highlight the challenge facing the Taliban, who are now expected to provide security across the country despite lacking the manpower, skills, and finance of the previous Afghan government.
Dr Antionio Giustozzi, a senior research fellow at the defence think tank the Royal United Services Institute, said: “ISIS-K’s main enemy has always been the Taliban – there were relatively few incidents between them and the Americans previously.
“What’s different now is the spread of their activity across Afghanistan – Charikar, Kunduz, and Kandahar – these are places ISIS-K didn’t have overt activity before.
“The Islamic State sees the Taliban as being in a weak position right now as they are stretched very thin financially and militarily. Their manpower is taken up controlling the cities, so ISIS-K see now as the right time to strike.”
This week, a US Department of Defence official said that ISIS-K also intends to attack Western countries but that they don’t currently have the means to do so.
It is not just the US that will be monitoring developments with ISIS-K closely.
For the threat to be controlled, the support of other external powers will likely be needed. According to Dr Guistozzi: “The Taliban can only consolidate with support of the regional powers, notably China and Russia. Both of these countries are against the Islamic State – ISIS-K fear Russia in particular and their ruthless airstrikes, like they carried out in Syria.”
Reporting: Jack Taylor and Kieran Devine
Maps and Digital Production: Ganesh Rao
Satellite imagery: Google Earth
Data: The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED)
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
The war in Ukraine would end if all NATO countries stopped buying oil from Russia, Donald Trump has said.
The US president, in a post on his Truth Social platform on Saturday, said the alliance’s commitment to winning the war “has been far less than 100%” and the purchase of Russian oil by some members is “shocking”.
Doing so “greatly weakens your negotiating position and bargaining power, over Russia,” he said.
NATO member Turkey has been the third largest buyer of Russian oil since 2023, after China and India, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, with fellow members Hungary and Slovakia also buying energy supplies from Moscow.
A NATO ban on the practice plus tariffs on China would “also be of great help in ENDING this deadly, but RIDICULOUS, WAR”, he added.
The president said NATO members should also put 50% to 100% tariffs on China – and only withdraw them if the conflict ends.
‘China’s grip’ on Russia
“China has a strong control, and even grip, over Russia,” Mr Trump posted, and powerful tariffs “will break that grip”.
The US president has already placed a 25% import tax on goods from India over its buying of Russian energy products.
Mr Trump said responsibility for the war fell on his predecessor Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
He did not include in that list Russian President Vladimir Putin, who launched the invasion.
President Donald Trump at a New York Yankees baseball game on Thursday. Pic: AP
Pic: AP
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On the battlefield on Saturday, Russian troops took control of the village of Novomykolaivka in Ukraine’s southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region, the Russian Defence Ministry said.
A drone attack hit an oil refinery in the city of Ufa, around 870 miles (1,400km) from the border with Ukraine, the local governor said, calling it a terrorist incident.
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NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said on Friday the 32-nation alliance would place military equipment on the border with Belarus, Russia and Ukraine to deter potential Russian aggression.
Operation ‘Eastern Sentry’ followed Wednesday’s provocative incursion by multiple Russian drones into the airspace of Poland, another NATO member.
Polish forces shot down the drones, which Moscow said went astray because they were jammed.
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Prince Harry’s surprise visit to Ukraine
Prince Harry’s surprise visit
The Duke of Sussex made a surprise visit to Ukraine on Friday, promising to do “everything possible” to help the recovery of injured military staff.
Travelling on an overnight train to Kyiv, Prince Harry, who has since left the country, told The Guardian: “We cannot stop the war but what we can do is do everything we can to help the recovery process.
“We have to keep it [the war] in the forefront of people’s minds. I hope this trip will help to bring it home to people because it’s easy to become desensitised to what has been going on.”
A barrage of airstrikes has killed at least 32 people in Gaza City as Israel continued intensifying its offensive there, medical staff have said.
The dead include 12 children, according to the morgue in Shifa Hospital, where the bodies were brought.
Health officials said one of the strikes killed a family of 10, including a mother and her three children.
The Palestinian Football Association said a player for the Al-Helal Sporting Club, Mohammed Ramez Sultan, was killed with 14 members of his family.
Israel’s army did not immediately respond to questions about the strikes when contacted by the Associated Press news agency.
Israel has in recent days increased its strikes on Gaza City, having ordered residents to leave what it says is Hamas’s last stronghold.
Palestinians run for cover. Pic: AP
Hundreds of thousands of people are still in the city, struggling under conditions of famine, which was declared by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) three weeks ago. Israel previously denied there is a famine in Gaza.
Aid workers say the number of people leaving has spiked in recent weeks, but many families remain stuck due to difficulties with transportation and housing.
Others have been displaced many times and do not want to move again, not trusting that anywhere in the Strip is safe.
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Earlier this month: IDF drops evacuation flyers on Gaza before tower bombed
In a message shared on social media on Saturday, Israel’s army told the remaining Palestinians in Gaza City to “leave immediately” and move south into what it is calling a humanitarian zone.
Sites in southern Gaza, where Israel is telling people to go, are overcrowded, the United Nations has said.
A spokesperson for the Israeli army said more than 250,000 people have left Gaza City – but the UN puts the number at around 100,000 between mid-August and mid-September.
The UN and aid groups have warned that displacing hundreds of thousands of people will exacerbate the dire humanitarian crisis in the enclave.
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The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said on Saturday that seven people, including children, died from malnutrition-related causes over the past 24 hours.
Israel has said it now controls 75% of Gaza, much of which has been reduced to fields of rubble. It has vowed to take the rest.
The current conflict followed Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, when militants killed 1,200 people and took around 250 people hostage.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 64,803 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health authorities. It does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count.
China has warned the UK and the US after their warships sailed through the diplomatically-fraught Taiwan Strait.
Chinese naval and air forces were ordered to monitor and warn the two ships, the HMS Richmond and the USS Higgins, as they made their way through the 110-mile (180km) passage between the island and the Chinese mainland on Friday.
The pair were engaged in “trouble-making and provocation”, according to Beijing’s People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Eastern Theatre Command.
The USS Higgins in the South China Sea in August. Pic: Philippine Coast Guard/AP
“The actions of the United States and Britain send the wrong signals and undermine peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” it said in a statement.
The Ministry of Defence said the sailing was a routine passage, adding that wherever the Royal Navy operates, “it does so in full compliance with international law and norms, and exercises freedom of navigation rights in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea”.
The US Indo-Pacific Command also described the mission as a routine transit, describing the strait as “beyond the territorial sea of any coastal state.
“Navigational rights and freedoms in the Taiwan Strait should not be limited,” it said in a statement.
The British vessel, deployed in the East China Sea in 2021, is a Type 34, or Duke Class frigate, and the US ship is an Arleigh Burke-class (Flight II) Aegis guided missile destroyer.
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China’s navy said earlier on Friday that its third aircraft carrier, the Fujian, which is still undergoing sea trials, had passed through the strait as well.
Last week, a Canadian and an Australian warship made the journey along the strategic waterway.
The US and its allies, including Canada, Britain and France, send ships along the strait, which they see as being in international waters, around once a month.
In June, another British warship, the HMS Spey, sailed through the strait to “cause trouble”, in Beijing’s words.
China views Taiwan as its own territory, which Taipei rejects, and claims the strait is part of its territorial waters.
Beijing has increased its military pressure on the island over the last five years, including by staging war games nearby.
Taiwan’s top China policymaker and head of its Mainland Affairs Council, said on Friday China was preparing to invade Taiwan.
Speaking in Washington, Chiu Chui-cheng warned that if Taiwan were to fall it would cause a regional “domino effect” that would threaten US security.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned what he called China’s “destabilising plans” for a disputed atoll in the South China Sea.
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The shoal lies within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone but has been under Beijing’s control since 2012.
China claims almost all the sea, which is used to transport more than $3 trillion of shipping commerce annually, despite competing claims by the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam.
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