Islamic State claims responsibility for the attack that killed three Spanish tourists in Afghanistan

“Christian tourists were subject to 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 Shiite Hazaras,” the agency added.

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

The same briefing note also mentions 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 the director of Information and Culture of Bamiyan, 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 fatalities are a woman and her daughter, both pharmacists, who ran pharmacies at Sants station, in Barcelona, ​​and in Terrasa, respectively, and a retired engineer, 63 years old, from Girona, who had worked for the chemical company Covestro in its factory in Tarragona.

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

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