Attacks on Kabul gurdwaras, 2020 and 2022

Who: The Sikh worshippers of Kabul; the gunmen of two attacks, both claimed by the Islamic State; and the Afghan security forces (2020) and Taliban forces (2022) who fought them.

What: On 25 March 2020, at about 7:30 in the morning, a gunman in police uniform entered Gurdwara Har Rai Sahib in the Shor Bazaar area of old Kabul, shot a guard and opened fire in the main hall. Other attackers followed and shot people room by room. The siege lasted about six hours. Twenty-five worshippers were killed, including a child, and at least eight were wounded. Afghan forces rescued about 80 people from inside and brought out about a dozen children. The next day an explosion went off near the funeral procession. The Islamic State claimed the attack, the Taliban denied involvement, and Afghan government sources blamed the Haqqani network. The dead included Mahram Ali, a security guard, and Al Jazeera reported that some families lost as many as seven members.

On 18 June 2022, at about 6 in the morning, as the granthi was entering Gurdwara Karte Parwan in Kabul for the morning parkash of Sri Guru Granth Sahib, gunmen attacked it and threw a grenade that started a fire near the gate. Taliban forces fought them for several hours and killed all three attackers, and a vehicle packed with explosives was stopped before it reached the building. Two people died, a Sikh worshipper and a Taliban fighter, and seven were injured. The Islamic State claimed the attack, saying it was retaliation for insults to the Prophet Mohammed.

Where: Gurdwara Har Rai Sahib in Shor Bazaar and Gurdwara Karte Parwan, both in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Why it mattered: The March 2020 attack followed an Islamic State-claimed suicide bombing in Jalalabad in 2018 that killed more than a dozen Sikhs, and it fell on a community already small: a member told Al Jazeera that about 70 to 80 families, roughly 700 people, remained. Har Rai Sahib and the nearby Dharamshala gurdwara have since been abandoned. Within months, groups of Afghan Sikhs and Hindus began leaving for India on special visas: the first 11 arrived in July 2020 and 176 more in August.