Islamic State Claims Deadly Bombing at Kabul Chinese Restaurant

A bombing claimed by the Islamic State wing in Afghanistan killed at least seven people and wounded more than a dozen in a Chinese restaurant in Kabul on Monday, officials said, in a sign of the group’s persistent threat despite the Afghan government’s claim to have vanquished it. The blast ripped through a noodle restaurant on a busy street of central Kabul filled with shops selling flowers, antiquities and rugs on Monday afternoon. A single attacker detonated his explosive vest 30 minutes after entering the restaurant, according to a statement released by the Islamic State through its media wing. A spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry, Abdul Mateen Qani, told The New York Times that seven people had been killed, including a Chinese citizen. He also said that the assault had been carried out by a single attacker from the Islamic State Khorasan Province, or ISIS-K, the group’s Afghanistan affiliate. Unlike most Western countries, China has maintained sustained diplomatic ties with the Taliban administration in Afghanistan. In 2023, China became the first country to appoint an ambassador in Afghanistan since the Taliban took power in 2021, and has signed mining contracts to tap into vast Afghan oil and mineral reserves. China has also vowed to include Afghanistan in the Belt and Road Initiative, its trillion-dollar global infrastructure project. Its foreign minister, Wang Yi, even visited Kabul last summer. But China has grown increasingly wary about potential insecurity in Afghanistan, even though the government has control of large swaths of the country and has tried to woo foreign investors back. China now advises its citizens against traveling to Afghanistan. ISIS-K said it has targeted Chinese citizens in retaliation for Beijing’s oppression of Uyghurs, a Muslim ethnic minority in China, and has criticized the Afghan government’s dealings with Beijing. In 2022, its militants injured at least five Chinese citizens in an attack on a hotel popular with Chinese visitors. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.