The Taliban announced Monday the arrest of a suspected member of the Islamic State jihadist group for his role in Friday’s attack on the Pakistan Embassy in the capital, Kabul.
Taliban spokesman and Afghan Deputy Information Minister Zabihullah Mujahid said the suspect «is a foreigner and a member of Islamic State,» before adding that «foreigners» were behind the attack.
«These circles want to create an atmosphere of mistrust between two brotherly countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan with these sinister actions,» he said through his account on the social network Twitter, while stressing that operations are still ongoing.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif called on the Taliban to act against those responsible for the attack on the Pakistani representative in Kabul, which left one security personnel seriously injured. Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) claimed responsibility for the attack.
The Pakistani Foreign Ministry said Sunday that it is seeking to verify the claim of responsibility «independently and in consultation with Afghan authorities.» «We must act decisively with all our collective might to defeat this threat,» it stressed.
He also confirmed that the head of the Pakistani diplomatic mission in Kabul, Ubaid-ur-Rehman Nizamani, has returned to Islamabad to participate in «pre-planned consultations», as reported by Geo TV.
The attack came days after a Pakistani delegation visited Kabul to address the escalating violence along the border since the Taliban took power in August 2021, as well as the end of the ceasefire recently declared by the armed group Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), known as the Pakistani Taliban.
The TTP, which differs from the Afghan Taliban in organizational matters but follows the same rigorist interpretation of Sunni Islam, brings together more than a dozen Islamist militant groups operating in Pakistan, where they have killed some 70,000 people in two decades of violence.
