(MENAFN- The Peninsula) NATO officials have voiced doubt over claims that the Islamic State group was behind a fatal bombing last week billed as the first major attack by the jihadists in Afghanistan.
The bombing on Saturday ripped through a crowd of government officials waiting to draw their salaries outside the Kabul Bank in the eastern city of Jalalabad, killing at least 34 people and wounding more than 100.
It was the most lethal bombing in the country to be claimed by insurgents allegedly allied with the IS group, which has captured swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq but has never formally acknowledged having a presence in Afghanistan.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani repeated the claim by the attackers in a speech on Saturday, intensifying fears that the IS's brutal reign of terror was creeping into Afghanistan, already in the grip of a fierce Taliban insurgency.
But Resolute Support, the new name for the NATO mission in Afghanistan, has expressed doubt over any IS link to the Jalalabad attack.
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