New Delhi: Two women who were working as animators with Afghanistan’s state-run film company were among the victims of Saturday’s terror attack in Kabul. Fatima Mohammadi and Tayiba Musavi, who were working on a children’s movie, were on their way home when bombs strapped to their minivan went off in the capital city.
After a long search, their bodies were found in a “barely identifiable condition” at a morgue in a forensic hospital late Saturday.
Seven civilians, including the two women, were killed and six others injured as two explosions struck public minivans at midday. The first explosion killed six people and wounded two while the second, in front of the Muhammad Ali Jinnah hospital where Covid-19 patients are admitted, killed one and wounded four.
The attack is the latest in a series of explosions to have rocked the country in recent weeks. Late Saturday, the Islamic State (IS) terror group issued a statement claiming responsibility for the blasts.
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‘Blown & burnt, how inhuman’
Afghan film director Sahra Karimi said in a tweet Sunday that the two animators had just started working for the Afghan Film Organization.
Mohammadi was also working with Afghanistan-based Art Lords, an organisation that, according to their Twitter bio, deals in “Global art for social change movement, voice of the voiceless. Promoting critical thinking, changing behaviour”.
Art Lords co-founder Omaid H. Sharifi tweeted: “My heart bleeds while looking at Fathima Mohammadi’s artworks. A brilliant artist contributing to Art Lords Net gallery. She was telling stories of pain, suffering, hope and kindness through her work, she is no more. Blown and Burnt, just like that. How brutal and inhuman (sic).”
Sticky bombs being used to target Shias
Saturday’s explosion in the Shia-majority neighbourhood was the second such attack to hit Kabul this month. On 3 June, two public mini-buses were blown up in the western part of Kabul.
According to an AP news report about the latest attack, Afghanistan’s IS affiliate said its operatives blew up two minivans carrying “disbeliever Shiites” using sticky bombs, according to a statement released by the terror outfit.
Shias are a minority in mostly Sunni Afghanistan, and the local IS affiliate has declared war on them.
Sticky bombs — explosives fitted with a magnet or having magnetic properties — slapped onto cars stuck in Kabul’s chaotic traffic are the newest weapons terrorising Afghans, the AP report said.
The IS has carried out similar bombings in the area, including four attacks on four minivans earlier this month that killed at least 18 people.
The area where the explosions took place is largely populated by the minority Hazara ethnic group who are mostly Shia Muslims.
An attack on a Kabul school on 8 May killed nearly 100 people, all of them members of the Hazara ethnic minority and most of them young girls who were just leaving class.
(Edited by Manasa Mohan)
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