“OChristian tourists were the target of an armed attack in the Afghan city of Bamiyan”, reported the Amaq agency, close to the ‘jihadists’, in a statement published on the Telegram platform.

“The fighters attacked the Christian tourists and their fellow Shiites (a branch of Islam despised by IS) with machine guns, killing and wounding seven Christians and around five Hazara Shiites,” the agency added.

Amaq further specified that “the dead and injured Christians were of different nationalities, including from countries such as Spain, Norway, Australia and Lithuania”, indicating that the attack was “in response to directives from Islamic State leaders” to target Western citizens.

The same informative note also mentioned that Bamiyan “is an important destination for Christian and pagan tourists because it contains statues of Buddha” which, according to Amaq, are “guarded” by the Taliban.

According to Bamiyan’s director of information and culture, Safiullah Rayed, the attack – the first against foreign tourists since the Taliban came to power in 2021 – took place on Friday, when the group “was inside a vehicle”. during the visit to the city.

The Spanish fatal victims are a woman and her daughter, both pharmacists, who ran pharmacies at the Sants station, in Barcelona, ​​and in Terrasa, respectively, and a 63-year-old retired engineer, from Girona, who had worked for the chemical company Covestro at its factory in Tarragona.

The Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, JosĂ© Manuel Albares, said on Saturday, in statements to the EFE agency, that the Spaniards who survived the attack saw that a person came out of an alley and fired “very clearly” at the group of tourists.

A team of Spanish diplomats arrived in the Afghan capital, Kabul, today and is working to speed up the repatriation procedures for the bodies of the three Spaniards who died in the attack.

Read Also: A man, a mother and daughter. The Spanish victims of the attack in Afghanistan

Source: https://www.noticiasaominuto.com/mundo/2564084/estado-islamico-reivindica-ataque-que-matou-tres-espanhois-no-afeganistao

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