The String of ISIS Attacks That Killed Three Generations of One Afghan Family

Over two weeks, the Rajabis suffered loss after loss as suicide attacks on Shiite mosques in two parts of the country ravaged their family.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — When Masooma Rajabi saw her relatives flooding into the family’s courtyard, she broke down in sobs.

Her family had congregated there twice over the past two weeks: First to mourn the loss of her husband, who had been killed in a suicide attack on a Shiite mosque in northern Afghanistan, and then again after another blast ripped through a Shiite mosque in Kandahar, killing her father-in-law and lodging shrapnel in the skull of her 15-year-old son, Maisam.

She had clung to hope that Maisam would recover. But now, seeing her husband’s cousins and her mother quietly weeping, Masooma knew she had lost him, too.