IS group claims a bomb attack in Afghanistan has killed officers involved in a campaign against the poppy crop

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Islamic State has claimed responsibility for a bomb attack in northeastern Afghanistan that killed police officers who were part of a campaign against the poppy crop.

A motorcycle was booby-trapped and exploded, attacking a Taliban patrol in the city of Faizabad in Badakhshan province, killing and wounding 12 members of the patrol and destroying a four-wheel drive vehicle, the group said in a statement late Wednesday. declaration.

Abdul Mateen Qani, a spokesman for the Ministry of Interior, said the officers were on their way to destroy the area’s poppy crop.

The Islamic State group’s affiliate in Afghanistan, a key rival to the Taliban, has carried out attacks on schools, hospitals, mosques and Shiite areas across the country. In March, the group said one of its suicide bombers detonated an explosive belt among Taliban who had gathered at a bank in Kandahar to receive their salaries.

The Taliban vowed to eradicate the country’s drug growing industry and imposed a formal ban in April 2022, dealing a severe blow to hundreds of thousands of farmers and day laborers who depended on crop yields to survive. Opium cultivation fell by 95% after the ban, according to a report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime last November.

Protests are rare in Afghanistan under Taliban rule, but last week there was a response to the poppy eradication campaign in Badakhshan.

It prompted a high-ranking delegation led by Chief of Military Staff Fasihudin Fitrat to visit the region and negotiate with protesters.

Protests erupted last Friday after a man was shot and killed by the Taliban for resisting poppy eradication efforts in Darayum district. Another was killed on Saturday during a protest in the Argo neighborhood.