Al-Qaida linked group claims Kabul suicide attack on Shia pilgrims

 

The immediate aftermath of the suicide attack on the Shia Abul Fazl shrine in Kabul, Afghanistan. Photograph: AP

The unprecedented sectarian attack which killed 55 Shia worshippers in Kabul is likely to have been the work of al-Qaida or a group closely associated with it, security sources and analysts believe.

A spokesman for an obscure Pakistani extremist group called Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al Almi claimed responsibility in a phone call to Radio Mashaal – a Pashto language radio station.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al Almi is a small faction based in Pakistan's tribal area and is considered an even more radical offshoot of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, (LeJ), a murderous anti-Shia group founded in 1996. Both groups act as surrogates for al-Qaida.

The Taliban was quick to distance itself from Tuesday's bombing and the Afghan Taliban has generally avoided sectarian violence. The Pakistani Taliban, however, has its roots in anti-Shia violence, and LeJ acted as the training ground for its leader, Hakimullah Mehsud.

LeJ maintained training camps in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime but has not mounted attacks in Afghanistan in recent years. It is believed to have been behind some of the most audacious attacks in Pakistan, including the September 2008 bombing of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad and the armed assault on the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore in March 2009.

The group also claimed responsibility for the massacre of 29 Shia pilgrims on a bus in Pakistan's Baluchistan province in September, and an attack on an Ashura procession in Karachi in 2009 which killed 30 people.

Until now, the splinter group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al Almi was best known for kidnapping two former Pakistani spies and a British journalist in the tribal area last year.

The two former agents with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, Colonel Imam and Khalid Khawaja, were abducted in North Waziristan along with the British journalist Asad Qureshi, who was making a film for Channel 4.

The kidnappers demanded a $25m (£16m) ransom for Imam, who was regarded as the godfather of the original Afghan Taliban for his undercover work in Afghanistan in the 1990s.

Pleas from the leaders of the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network of militants went unheeded by the group. Imam and Khawaja were executed. Qureshi was later freed.

Earlier this year, the Pakistani courts freed Malik Ishaq, one of LeJ's founders. Ishaq had faced dozens of murder charges but the courts said there was lack of evidence – his group had allegedly killed numerous witnesses who may have testified against him.