The assault in the capital, Kabul, was the latest in a series targeting the country’s religious minorities that have stoked fears about the Taliban’s ability to provide security.
Militants stormed a Sikh temple in Afghanistan’s capital on Saturday, leaving several people dead and others wounded, and stoking already heightened concerns among the country’s religious minorities about whether the new Taliban government will be able to protect them from rising violence by extremist groups. The assault, which lasted over an hour, was the first to target the country’s Sikh community since the Taliban seized power last summer. It was the latest in a series of bloody terrorist attacks that since April have killed over 100 people, predominantly civilians among the country’s Shiite and Sufi minorities. Abdul Nafi Takor, an Interior Ministry spokesman, said that one Taliban security member involved in stopping the assault and that one civilian were killed; he also said that seven other people were injured. A doctor from a nearby military hospital, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media, said the hospital had received the bodies of six worshipers killed at the temple. The recent bloodshed has upended a relative calm that came after the collapse of the Western-backed government in August, which ended 20 years of war, and has raised questions about whether the new Taliban government will be able to make good on its hallmark pledge of providing security.
