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On April 21, 2022, the Islamic State (ISIS) official media reported that the organization's fighters had killed or wounded more than 100 Afghan Shi'ite worshippers in an IED attack on a mosque in Mazar-i-Sharif, northern Afghanistan.[1]
On the following day, the Iran-backed Al-Nujaba movement, also known as Harakat Hizbullah Al-Nujaba, released an official statement on its Telegram channel in which it calls on the international community, the Islamic world, and the Afghan authorities to defend the Shi'ites in the country, and threatens that "the arm of the axis of resistance may attack the enemies of Allah anytime and in any place."[2]
In its statement, Al-Nujaba descibes the attack as "a terrorist explosion" and "a nefarious deed which is not unusual for Wahhabi ideology [i.e. Saudi Arabia]," and asserts that "the silence regarding these attacks is not helpful and the dialogue with this gang is useless." The movement condemns the attack and adds, "We demand that the international community, the Muslim world, and the Afghan authorities defend the Shi'ites, and if they don't they should know and understand that the arm of the axis of resistance may attack the enemies of Allah anytime and in any place and that the defense of the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad is not a difficult and impossible task, when the circumstances so dictate."
Al-Nujaba movement Deputy Secretary-General and spokesman Nasser Al-Shammari also responded to the attack and described it as, "a terrible crime which reflects the extent of the barbarity and cruelty of its perpetrators while it is the House of Saud [the Saudi royal family] and the U.S. who oversaw the nurturing of its barbarity and cruelty."[3] He calls on the Afghan government to "take the responsibility incumbent upon it with complete seriousness and to persecute this errant gang," and adds, "Thanks to Allah for the benevolence of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) which protects the Shi'ites in Iraq, mainly from criminal deeds like these."
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