Beijing has asked the Taliban government to protect its citizens after an explosion at a Chinese-run restaurant in the Afghan capital Kabul killed at least seven people.
Six Afghans and a Chinese national were killed, and several others injured, in an explosion at a Chinese restaurant in a heavily guarded part of the city center on Monday, officials told media.
The jihadist group Islamic State (IS) said it was behind the attack – although police in Kabul said the “nature of the explosion is still unknown and under investigation”.
China has urged its citizens not to travel to Afghanistan, where the Taliban took control in 2021. The Islamic State has claimed many of the bombings since then.
Speaking on Tuesday, Beijing’s foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun added that China “has made urgent representations to the Afghan side, demanding that the Afghan side spare no effort to treat the injured, and take effective measures to protect the safety of Chinese citizens”.
City police spokesman Khalid Zadran said the explosion occurred near the kitchen of the Chinese Noodle restaurant, located under a guesthouse in the Shahr-e-Naw area of the capital.
Dejan Panic, the Afghanistan director of the humanitarian group EMERGENCY, said they received “20 people” in their hospital, seven of whom were dead on arrival. Four women and a child were also among the injured.
Footage circulating on social media in the aftermath of the blast showed a large hole ripped into the side of the building, Reuters news agency said.
Witnesses told BBC Afghan that a car outside the restaurant was completely destroyed, and that locals helped rush people in “critical condition” to hospital. Large sheets were later placed to cover the damaged building.
Police spokesman Zadran said the restaurant mainly caters to Chinese Muslims, and is run by a Chinese Muslim man from China’s Xinjiang region, his wife and his Afghan business partner.
In its statement, the local IS branch said China was on its “list” of targets, mainly because of “China’s increasing crimes against oppressed Uyghur Muslims”.
China has been accused of committing crimes against humanity against the Uyghur population and other Muslim-majority ethnic groups in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.
The Chinese government has denied all allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang.
IS has previously claimed responsibility for an attack on a Chinese-owned hotel in Kabul in 2022, in which three of the attackers were killed and at least two others were wounded.
Recently, Chinese people who were just on the border with Tajikistan were targeted by unknown assailants. In November, six Chinese nationals died in three separate incidents. Beijing has told its citizens to leave the Tajik-Afghan border.