KABUL: The Taleban yesterday denied any involvement in a deadly suicide attack on International Committee of the Red Cross offices that prompted the organization to halt staff movement across Afghanistan.
The two-hour assault in the eastern city of Jalalabad on Wednesday, which left one Afghan guard dead, was the first time ICRC offices have been targeted in Afghanistan since the organization began work there 26 years ago.
An International Organization for Migration (IOM) complex in Kabul came under sustained attack less than a week earlier, and the two incidents raise fears of a new chapter in Afghanistan’s bloody history in which no organization is considered off-limits.
But the Taleban — who refer to themselves as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan — distanced themselves from the attack yesterday.
“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan hereby announces that it was neither involved in the attack on ICRC office in Jalalabad which happened on Wednesday May 29, nor does it support such attacks,” the insurgents said in a statement.
The ICRC, with 1,800 employees nationwide, had 36 staff including six expatriates in Jalalabad, which is close to the Pakistani border and surrounded by some of Afghanistan’s most unstable districts.
Taleban deny Red Cross attack in Afghanistan
