Senior Taliban official lauds suicide bombers as ‘heroes of Islam’

Kabul, Oct 19 (EFE).- A senior Taliban figure has said that suicide bombers are “heroes of Islam” for joining the Islamist militants’ fight against foreign and Afghan government forces, Taliban officials told Efe on Tuesday.

Speaking at an event in the capital Kabul on Monday, Taliban interior minister Sirajuddin Haqqani who is also the leader of the Haqqani Network, said the families of the “martyrs” would receive land and cash for their sacrifices.

The Haqqani Network was involved in some of the most deadly suicide attacks in the country in the past 20 years.

In a statement, Taliban’s Interior Ministry said: “Sirajuddin Haqqani met the family members of martyred Fidayeen (suicide bombers) at the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul”, which was the scene of at least two deadly suicide attacks by Taliban suicide bombers in 2018 and 2011.

During those attacks, the hotel was partially damaged as dozens of people, including foreigners, were killed and injured.

The takeover of the country by the Taliban — which Haqqani called the “the arrival of the Islamic system” — “is the result of the blood of our martyrs,” the official said in his speech to thousands of family members of the suicide bombers.

Haqqani also distributed 10,000 Afs ($110), clothes and promised plots of land for each suicide bomber’s family.

Taliban spokesman, Bilal Karimi, told Efe that only families of Taliban fighters who “carried out martyrdom seeking attacks”, a common reference by the Taliban to their suicide bombers, were invited to the event.He said these families did not represent all suicide bombers, and that similar events would be held for the families of other “martyrs”.

Some of the Taliban’s more effective attacks in the past 20 years in urban areas against foreign and Afghan forces and government institutions were carried out by the group’s suicide bombers. EFE

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