On 24 January 2018, militants affiliated with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – Khorasan Province (ISIL-KP) launched a bomb and gun attack on a Save the Children office in Jalalabad, a city in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar. The attack killed six people and injured 27.
Background
Save the Children is a British non-governmental organization (NGO) that provides aid to children in developing countries through healthcare, education, and economic initiatives. The group had been active in Afghanistan since 1976 and, as of 2018, had programs active in sixteen of the country's thirty-four provinces. Charity groups like Save the Children were frequent targets for militant groups in Afghanistan. For example, in May 2017, a Swedish NGO in Kabul, Operation Mercy, was the target of an attack that left two people dead, and in 2010, ten members of an international eye care team were shot and killed by Taliban militants in Nuristan Province.
Attack
Shortly after 9:00 a.m. local time on 24 January 2018, a suicide bomber in a car detonated explosives at the front of the Save the Children compound. The blast was followed by at least four armed militants attempting to storm the building. According to witnesses, some of the attackers were wearing Afghan police uniforms. A firefight broke out between Afghan security forces and the attackers that lasted more than eight hours. Forty-five people in the compound had to be rescued by commandos. All the attackers were killed. Six civilians, including three Save the Children employees, were killed, and at least 27 people, including three Afghan troops, were injured.
Responsibility
The Taliban denied responsibility for the attack. ISIL claimed responsibility, stating it was targeting Western institutions. In the aftermath of the attack, Save the Children suspended its operations in Afghanistan.
