The Pentagon said it is still assessing the mass suicide bombing in Jalalabad Saturday to determine if the Islamic State is operating in Afghanistan or if attacks are being carried out by disaffected Taliban members who kill in the group’s name.
In the Saturday attack, a suicide bomber detonated himself in a line of people at a bank, killing 35, according to news reports. That day Afghan President Ashraf Ghani blamed the Islamic State for the attack, according to the New York Times, but did not further elaborate.
For months the United States’ official line on the Islamic State’s presence in Afghanistan has been that attacks were just pockets of violence caused by former Taliban fighters who rebranded themselves as Islamic State, but that the official Iraq and Syria-based group had not spread to Afghanistan.
On Monday the Pentagon said it was still assessing the attack to determine whether there was any organizational or planning involvement outside of the Afghanistan cells.
“We are certainly concerned about the potential emergence of [the Islamic State] in Afghanistan,” Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren said. “We need to continue to do our assessment” of the attack.
