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An ISIL group attack on a prison in eastern Afghanistan holding hundreds of its members is raging on after killing at least 21 people in fighting overnight, a local official said.
Attaullah Khogyani, a spokesman for the governor of Nangarhar province, said that another 43 people have been wounded. He said the dead include prisoners.and some prisoners have escaped during the fighting.
A suicide car bombing initially targeted the entrance gate of the prison in Jalalabad, Nangarhar’s provincial capital some 115 kilometers (70 miles) east of the capital, Kabul. ISIL militants then opened fire on Afghan security forces guarding the facility.
The ISIL group’s affiliate in Afghanistan, known as IS in Khorasan province, claimed responsibility for the attack, motive of the attack wasn’t immediately clear.
The prison houses about was about 1,500 inmates, of which several hundred are believed to belong to the ISIL group affiliate in Afghanistan.
The attack comes a day after the Afghan intelligence agency said a senior ISIL group commander was killed by Afghan special forces near Jalalabad.
While the ISIL group has seen its so-called caliphate stretching across Iraq and Syria eliminated after a years long campaign, the group has continued fighting in Afghanistan.
The Taliban’s political spokesman, Suhail Shaheen, told The Associated Press that his group was not involved in the Jalalabad attack. The U.S. struck a peace deal with the Taliban in February. A second, crucial round of negotiations between the Taliban and the political leadership in Kabul has yet to start. Still, Washington and NATO already have begun withdrawing troops in line with the deal.
“We have a cease-fire and are not involved in any of these attacks anywhere in the country,” he said.
The Taliban declared a three-day cease-fire starting on July 31 for the major Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha. The cease-fire expired at 12 a.m. Monday though it wasn’t immediately clear if it would be extended as the U.S. pushes for an early start to intra-Afghan negotiations that have repeatedly been delayed since Washington signed a peace deal with the Taliban in February.
The Taliban also had denied being involved in a suicide bombing in eastern Logar province on July 30 that killed at least nine people and wounded 40.
