Like cancer cells, terrorism grows.
Even as the Islamic State (ISIS) continues to lose ground and fighting men in Syria and Iraq, another group stamped with the same brand of terror has cast its shadow in another conflict-ridden country—Afghanistan.
A militant group known as Islamic State (IS) Khorasan kidnapped and then slaughtered on Tuesday at least 30 people, including children, near Firoz Koh, the capital of Afghanistan's Ghor province, reports said.
U.N. officials said the attack prompted angry protests from residents about the government's failure to protect them, The Guardian reported.
Hundreds of people gathered in the town as bodies were prepared for burial and some residents demanded government action. "Our demand to the local and central government is to bombard and destroy the terrorist nests in this province," one protester said. "If the government doesn't pay attention to our civil movements, then we will use the power of our youth to destroy the terrorist nests."
Amnesty International condemned the massacre as a "horrendous crime" and called for an immediate investigation by the government.
Afghan officials believe the massacre was prompted by the militants' desire to avenge the killing of an ISIS commander in Afghanistan by security forces a day earlier, according to The Christian Post.
Days earlier, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan revealed that the ISIS is planning to establish a caliphate inside Afghanistan, just like what it plans to do in Iraq and Syria.
"Right now we see them very focused on trying to establish their caliphate, the Khorasan caliphate, inside Afghanistan," General John Nicholson told NBC News on Sunday.
Nicholson said just like their counterparts in Iraq and Syria, members of the IS Khorasan are recruiting foreign fighters, particularly from Uzbekistan and Pakistan, to fight in Afghanistan.
However, IS Khorasan is having difficulty in recruiting more fighters since the ISIS local affiliate is "completely rejected by the Afghan people," Nicholson added.
"With our Afghan partners, we've been able to reduce that territory significantly and inflict heavy casualties on them to include killing their leaders," he said.
