ISIS expanded dramatically in Afghanistan: UN

The Islamic State terrorist group is tearing a path across Afghanistan, establishing itself in “nearly all” of its provinces while increasing attacks more than five-fold in the past year, the UN’s envoy to the country has warned.   

Addressing the UN Security Council on Wednesday, the body’s special representative for Afghanistan Deborah Lyons spoke of a major Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) surge through the war-torn country, claiming the jihadist group has now expanded nationwide.   

“Once limited to a few provinces and the capital, ISKP now seems to be present in nearly all provinces, and increasingly active,” Lyons said, referring to the group’s Afghanistan-based ‘Khorasan’ faction. She added that so far in 2021, IS has carried out 334 attacks, up from just 60 last year.   

The envoy’s comments came just hours after an Islamic State bombing erupted in a Shiite Muslim neighborhood of the Afghan capital, killing one and wounding six others, according to Reuters.   

Despite the rise in IS attacks in recent months, however, Lyons said the overall security situation in Afghanistan has improved since the end of the US war, which stretched on for two decades.