NATO Voices Doubt over IS Link in Fatal Afghan Bombing

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' 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. 

"We have not yet seen evidence of (IS) direction or support of the attacks," Resolute Support spokesman Christopher Belcher said in a statement this week.

"Jalalabad continues to be an area with significant Taliban influence and this attack fits the pattern of past Taliban attacks in the region -- underscoring that this attack does not represent a fundamental change in the security environment."

The Taliban, which distanced itself from Saturday's attack, have seen defections in recent months -- with some insurgents apparently adopting the IS flag to rebrand themselves as a more lethal force as NATO troops depart.

But analysts doubt whether they have the ideological and logistical backing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of the Islamic State, which is struggling to retain territory in Syria and Iraq.

Ghani, however, has repeatedly raised the ominous prospect of IS militants making inroads into Afghanistan, without publicly citing any official intelligence.

Some local observers accuse him of grabbing world attention by playing up the IS group threat in the face of dwindling foreign aid and as international troops depart.

Afghanistan's deputy Afghan intelligence chief Hesamuddin Hesam described the alleged Islamic State fighters in Afghanistan as Taliban turncoats.

"There are two type of IS," Hesam told parliament on Sunday.

"One that operates in Syria and one that is in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan they are the same old Taliban who have swapped their white flag with black, and have become more swift and deadly."