A bombing claimed by the Islamic State wing in Afghanistan killed at least seven people and wounded more than a dozen in a Chinese restaurant in Kabul on Monday, officials said, in a sign of the group’s persistent threat despite the Afghan government’s claim to have vanquished it.

The blast ripped through a noodle restaurant on a busy street of central Kabul filled with shops selling flowers, antiquities and rugs on Monday afternoon. A single attacker detonated his explosive vest 30 minutes after entering the restaurant, according to a statement released by the Islamic State.

A spokesman for the Afghan interior ministry, Abdul Mateen Qani, told The New York Times that seven people had been killed, including a Chinese citizen. He also said that the attack had been carried out by a single attacker from the Islamic State Khorasan Province, or IS-K, the group’s Afghanistan affiliate.

IS-K says it has targeted Chinese citizens in retaliation for Beijing’s oppression of Uyghurs, a Muslim ethnic minority in China, and has criticised the Afghan government’s dealings with Beijing.

Prison escape

The Syrian military claimed on Tuesday that guards from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces had abandoned a camp in northeast Syria housing thousands of people linked to the Islamic State group, allowing the detainees to escape.

New York Times News Service