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People running from the explosion
JALALABAD, Afghanistan — The Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, blamed the Islamic State extremist group for a suicide bombing here on Saturday that killed 35 civilians. If responsibility is confirmed, it will suggest a major escalation of the group’s activities in Afghanistan.
The bombing at the Kabul Bank branch here, in which a man wearing an explosive vest targeted a crowd of people waiting to collect their pay, also wounded 125, making it the worst suicide attack this year, Afghan officials said. All of the victims were civilians, the police said.
“Today the deadly attack in Nangarhar Province — who claimed responsibility?” said Mr. Ghani, speaking on national television during a visit to the northern province of Badakhshan, which has been hit hard by recent Taliban attacks. “Taliban did not claim responsibility, but Daesh claimed responsibility.” Daesh is the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
If Islamic State militants did carry out the attack, it will be the first time they have struck so far from their Middle East home ground.
The blast at the bank was one of three separate explosions heard in Jalalabad, the capital of the eastern province of Nangarhar, in quick succession around 8 a.m. Saturday, according to the police.
The Taliban spokesman for eastern Afghanistan, Zabiullah Mujahid, disavowed the bank attack soon after it happened, denying in three different languages on Twitter that Taliban insurgents had been behind it. “We condemn/deny involvement,” Mr. Mujahid wrote in one post.
In 2011, the Taliban claimed responsibility for a similarly deadly attack on the same branch of Kabul Bank in Jalalabad, in which seven suicide attackers killed 38 bank customers, also on a payday. Many Afghans collect their salaries directly from banks as a safeguard against the country’s rampant corruption.
Reached by cellphone at an undisclosed location, Mr. Mujahid repeated his denials that the Taliban insurgents had anything to do with Saturday’s bombing. He did not directly repudiate reports circulating on social media that the Islamic State was responsible for it.
“On ISIS we don’t comment,” Mr. Mujahid said. “We haven’t commented on them in the past, and we will not say anything now. We are responsible for the war in this country and that is all we can comment and give views on.”
He said the Taliban would investigate the attack and “then I will comment and say who was behind it.”
Mr. Ghani did not elaborate on his statement that the Islamic State had taken responsibility for the Jalalabad attack, and it was not clear where he had obtained that information. Pahjwok News, an Afghan news agency, reported that a former Pakistani Taliban figure named Shahidullah Shahid said ISIS had claimed responsibility for the attack. But there was no confirmation that Mr. Shahid spoke for the group, whose nearest confirmed base of operations is 1,500 miles to the west, in Iraq.
There have been reports of ISIS recruiting activities in Afghanistan, especially in the southern part of the country. But the bombing on Saturday was the first instance of a significant terrorist attack said to be claimed by the group anywhere in eastern Afghanistan. Jalalabad is only about 60 miles from the national capital, Kabul.
American military officials have expressed alarm about reports of attempts by the Islamic State to make inroads in Afghanistan through taking advantage of splits in the Taliban ranks. There is also discontent over the fact that even most Taliban commanders have not seen the reclusive Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, in many years.
In February, an American drone strike in southern Helmand Province killed a former Taliban commander, Mullah Abdul Rauf Khadim, who claimed to have switched his allegiance to ISIS.
Reports were circulating on social media in Afghanistan on Saturday showing a photograph said to be of the Jalalabad suicide bomber before the attack. He was dressed in Afghan-style clothing, with a crude, handmade ISIS flag behind him. The authenticity of the photograph could not be immediately confirmed.
Local Afghan journalists in Jalalabad said they had received an anonymous text signed by Wilayat Khorasan, a group claiming to be an ISIS affiliate in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and claiming responsibility for the bombing immediately after it happened Saturday morning. The text was signed by Mr. Shahid but was sent via an unknown cellphone number, and attempts by journalists to reach Mr. Shahid at a verified number were unsuccessful.
Fazel Ahmad Sherzad, the police chief of Nangarhar Province, put the death toll at 22 and the number of wounded at more than 50. But the head of the provincial health department, Najibullah Kamawal, said that hospitals had already received the bodies of 35 victims, along with 125 wounded.
The first of the three blasts in Jalalabad on Saturday morning occurred at a religious shrine and apparently involved a planted bomb, not a suicide attacker; only two people were wounded. Seconds later, according to the police, the suicide bomber at the bank detonated a vest packed with explosives.
A short time later, the police discovered a third bomb in a motorcycle parked in front of a branch of the Central Bank of Afghanistan, they said. They detonated it under controlled conditions to ensure that no one was hurt.
Pakistan’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, responded unusually quickly to reports of the Jalalabad attack. “Extending condolences on this tragic incident,” he said in a news release issued by his office. “Terrorism is a common enemy of both the countries which are now taking joint steps to eradicate this menace.”
The top United Nations official in Afghanistan, Nicholas Haysom, condemned the bombing.
“The continuing use of suicide attacks in densely populated areas, that are certain to kill and maim large numbers of Afghan civilians, may amount to a war crime,” he said. “Those responsible for this horrendous crime must be held accountable.”
Last year was the deadliest year of the war for civilians caught up in the Afghan conflict, according to the United Nations. The agency recorded a 22 percent increase in civilian casualties in 2014 over 2013, when the previous record was set; the great majority of the deaths were attributed to indiscriminate attacks by insurgents.
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