The Taliban Government of Afghanistan announced yesterday the transfer to the body depot, in Kabul, for autopsies, of the six people killed – three Catalans and three Afghans – by a terrorist in a market in Bamian on Friday. The Ministry of the Interior did not specify how long it will take before sending to Spain the bodies of a woman and her daughter, and a man. Another woman, an 82-year-old from Bilbao, is hospitalized in the center of the Italian emergency service – with long experience in the country -, after being treated for her injuries on Friday.
According to the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, it remains serious. Seven other people were injured. A team of Spanish diplomats arrived on Sunday from Qatar and Pakistan in the Afghan capital to speed up procedures to provide assistance to the rest of the group of thirteen tourists.
The attack, according to the Director of Information and Culture of Bamian, Safiul·lah Raied, took place at six in the afternoon, local time, in a market in Bamian when the group “was inside a vehicle” while visited the city This is one of the few details shared by the Taliban, who have released trickle-down information – reporting seven arrests in connection with the attack, including what appears to be the lone gunman – and have issued several bans on press, such as taking photographs of the scene of the attack or the center where the injured are.
The Islamic State-Khorassan (IS-K) claimed responsibility for the attack in a message through its Amaq Telegram agency on Sunday, and blamed the Taliban regime, which said the jihadist group was practically eradicated. But while the Taliban insisted on their message of security in order to lift the country’s ruined economy, the truth is that IS-K has continued to fight them and remains an important branch of the once powerful state Islamic. He took responsibility for the attacks in Kerman (Iran) in January and in Moscow in March, and has assured that his aim is to attack Western citizens – or “of the coalition”, as they say – “wherever they are”.
“This incident will affect the tourist flow in Afghanistan, but it will not stop, tourists will continue to come to Afghanistan”, Afghan analyst and tour guide Muhammad Nassim told Efe. According to him, security will be increased in several provinces, possibly including “armoured vehicles, guards and communication systems”. On the other hand, according to the opinion of British Joe Sheffer, founder of the Safarat tourism agency, “another attack like this and tourism is dead”. Your agency will reduce group sizes and limit outings on foot.
Afghanistan has received around 5,200 tourists in one year, most of them Chinese. Thais also go there, attracted in particular by the site of Bamian, where the Taliban destroyed the giant Buddha statues in 2001. Bamian is described as a region as beautiful as it is peaceful, but it is also the territory of Afghanistan’s Shiite minority, the Hazara people, always white from the Islamic State-Khorassan. Paradoxically, the author of Friday’s attack, according to some sources, was a Sunni Hazara.