Pakistan has said Islamabad is “deeply shocked” at the martyrdom of Afghanistan Acting Minister of Refugees and Repatriation Khalil-ur-Rahman Haqqani in an explosion on Wednesday afternoon.

Haqqani was martyred in an attack inside the ministry on Wednesday afternoon.

On Wednesday night, Ishaq Dar, Pakistan's Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, said Islamabad “unequivocally condemns terrorism in all its forms and manifestations. We are in touch with the Interim Afghan Government to ascertain further details.”

Pakistan’s special representative for Afghanistan Mohammad Sadiq also passed on his condolences.

He said: “The Government and people of Pakistan are deeply shocked and saddened by the cowardly terrorist attack in Kabul today, which targeted Alhaj Khalil-ur-Rahman Haqqani, Acting Minister for Refugees.

“Pakistan stands in solidarity with Afghanistan in this hour of grief and reiterates its commitment to work with Afghanistan in fighting the menace of terrorism and promoting regional peace and stability.”

The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has expressed its condolences over the martyrdom of the Minister of Refugees and Repatriation, Khalil-ur-Rahman Haqqani’s, and said he was “a tireless Mujahid in the way of God".

On Wednesday evening, IEA’s spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement that Khalil-ur-Rahman Haqqani’s martyrdom was a great loss for the government, the Mujahideen, his family and all Afghans.

“Khalil-ur-Rahman Haqqani spent his whole life in defense of God's religion in Jihad, migration and enduring hardships. He was one of the members of the great Jihadi family for which the enemies of Islam had set a five million dollars bounty on his head,” the statement read.

“Such a cowardly act cannot weaken the will of Muslims or lead the conspirators to their sinister goals against our strong Islamic system. Rather, such cowardly actions make the faces of the enemies of religion and Islam blacker and make their sinister intentions more obvious,” he said.

No group or individual has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.

Afghan Minister of Refugees and Repatriation, Khalil Haqqani, was martyred in a suicide bombing that targeted the ministry in Kabul on Wednesday, a reliable source confirmed.

Speaking to Ariana News, the source said the explosion happened inside the ministry, which led to the martyrdom of Haqqani.

Khalil Rahman Haqqani, 58, has been the acting Minister of Refugees and Repatriation since September 7, 2021.

Sudan - for the second year in a row - topped a 2025 watchlist of global humanitarian crises released by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) aid organization on Wednesday, followed by Gaza and the West Bank, Myanmar, Syria and South Sudan.

While Afghanistan is no longer in the top 10 on the Emergency Watchlist for this year, after being ranked third in 2023, the country still features in the unranked second half this year - between 11 and 20 on the list. 

According to the report, the improvement can be attributed to various factors including the economy having now settled at a low-level equilibrium and because of crises in many other countries deteriorating rapidly.

The report stated that Afghanistan’s economic crisis continues to cause some of the highest rates of humanitarian need worldwide and that growth is being held back by a number of factors. These include the country’s economic isolation, particularly the suspension of most development funding (which previously subsidized Afghanistan’s spending on public services by an estimated 75%), the lack of progress on unfreezing the Afghan central bank’s frozen funds (held in a Swiss-based trust fund), and the impact of sanctions and international restrictions on foreign financial inflows.

The New York-based IRC began the watchlist more than 15 years ago as an internal planning tool to prepare for the year ahead, but chief executive David Miliband said it now also served as a call to action globally.

The report said 305.1 million people around the world are in humanitarian need - up from 77.9 million in 2015 - and that the 20 countries on the IRC watchlist account for 82% of them. Miliband described the numbers as "crushing."

"There are more resources to do more good for more people than at any time in history. This makes it all the more bewildering that the gap between humanitarian need and humanitarian funding is also greater than ever," he wrote in the watchlist report.  

The report said the humanitarian crisis in Sudan was the largest since records began and that the country accounts for 10% of all people in humanitarian need, despite being home to just 1% of the global population.

War erupted in April 2023 from a power struggle between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces ahead of a planned transition to civilian rule, and triggered the world's largest displacement crisis.

The remaining 15 countries on the IRC watchlist are: Lebanon, Burkina Faso, Haiti, Mali, Somalia, Afghanistan, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Niger, Nigeria, Ukraine and Yemen.