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The US offered a $10 million prize on Monday for information leading to the “identity or location” of the leader of the ISIS group’s Afghanistan regional chapter.
The US State Department also offered a reward for any information leading to the arrest or conviction of individuals responsible for the August 26 “terrorist incident at the Kabul airport,” which was claimed by ISIS-Khorasan .
The incident, which claimed the lives of over 100 individuals, including 13 American soldiers, occurred as the US attempted to coordinate its haphazard retreat from Afghanistan and the evacuation of Afghans deemed vulnerable to the Taliban’s control.
Sanaullah Ghafari, commonly known as Shahab al-Muhajir, was named the head of ISIS-K by the ISIS group in June 2020, according to Washington.
ISIS-K is an Afghan branch of the ISIS terrorist group, which began in Iraq and Syria.
The State Department claimed in a statement that Ghafari is in charge of approving all ISIS-K operations in Afghanistan and securing financing to carry them out.
In November, he was placed on a terrorism watch list as a foreigner.
Ghafari’s surname suggests he came from the Arab world, but little else is known about him.
He’s said to be a former member of the Haqqani network, one of the Taliban’s most powerful and dreaded organisations.
ISIS-K has carried out some of the region’s bloodiest atrocities in recent years, massacring victims in mosques, temples, public squares, and hospitals in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Like the original ISIS group, the group has targeted Muslims from groups it considers heretical, particularly Shiites.
It had been hard struck by both the Taliban and US-led forces and was losing ground, but its attacks have increased since their opponent Islamists won control in August.
