By Asia Samachar | Afghanistan |
Gunmen stormed a Sikh gurdwara in the Afghan capital Saturday (June 18), lobbing at least one grenade and wounding two people, the interior ministry and witnesses said, according to a foreign news agency.
“I heard gunshots and blasts coming from the gurdwara,” Gurnam Singh, a Sikh community leader told AFP.
Interior ministry spokesman Abdul Nafi Takor said a grenade blast wounded two members of the Sikh community. Minutes later a car bomb detonated in the area but caused no casualties, Takor said, the report added.
In another report, it noted that gurdwara official Gornam Singh also confirmed the attack.
“There were around 30 people inside the temple. We don’t know how many of them are alive or how many dead. The Taliban are not allowing us to go inside, we don’t know what to do,” the official said.
Videos posted on social media showed plumes of black smoke rising from the temple, known as a gurdwara, in the Bagh-e-Bala neighbourhood of Kabul. Gunfire can also be heard.
In March 2020, 25 men, women and children were killed in a terror attack upon a Sikh gurdwara in central Kabul. The next day, an explosive went off just outside the crematorium as the Sikhs were cremating their dead. And the next day, yet another attack.
For many amongst the then 2,000 odd Sikhs and Hindus, the senseless attack upon the Gurdwara Guru Har Rai in Shor Bazaar was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back as far as their dreams of continuing to live in Afghanistan. The gunmen stormed the gurdwara, shot discriminately and held 80 hostages.
There are now only around 200 Sikhs living in Afghanistan, compared to around half a million in the 1970s.
RELATED STORY:
Sikhs are finished in Afghanistan (Asia Samachar, 29 March 2020)
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