A suicide bomb attack on people at a Shiite mosque in the Afghan city of Kunduz on Friday has killed at least 55 people in the bloodiest assault since US forces left the country in August.
Scores more people from the minority community were wounded in the blast, which was claimed by the Islamic State group and appeared designed to further destabilize Afghanistan in the wake of the Taliban takeover.
The regional branch of the Islamic State group has repeatedly targeted Shiites in Afghanistan.
Photo: EPA-EFE
It is a Sunni Islamist group like the Taliban, but the two are bitter rivals.
“It was a very terrifying incident,” said a teacher in Kunduz, who lives near the mosque. “Many of our neighbors have been killed and wounded. A 16-year-old neighbor was killed. They couldn’t find half of his body.”
Images from the scene showed debris strewn inside the mosque, its windows blown out by the explosion. Some men were seen carrying a body draped in a bloody sheet to an ambulance.
A medical source at Kunduz Provincial Hospital said that 35 dead and more than 55 wounded people had been taken there, while Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said that 20 dead and several dozen wounded were brought to its hospital.
Aminullah, an eyewitness whose brother was at the mosque, said: “After I heard the explosion, I called my brother, but he did not pick up.”
“I walked toward the mosque and found my brother wounded and faint,” Aminullah said. “We immediately took him to the MSF hospital.”
Matiullah Rohani, the Taliban government’s director of culture and information in Kunduz, confirmed that it was a suicide attack and put the death toll at 46.
The Taliban has been seeking to consolidate power, but still faces attacks from the regional Islamic State branch, called the Islamic State-Khorasan.
The Taliban head of security in the northern city accused the mosque attackers of trying to foment trouble between Shiites and Sunnis.
“We assure our Shiite brothers that in the future, we will provide security for them and that such problems will not happen to them,” Mulawi Dost Muhammad said.
Residents of the city, the capital of Kunduz Province, told reporters that the mosque blast happened during Friday prayers, the most important of the week for Muslims.
One witness, Rahmatullah, said that 300 to 400 people were inside.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for the perpetrators to be brought to justice.
Guterres “condemns in the strongest terms today’s horrific attack,” the third against a religious institution in Afghanistan in a week, his spokesman said.
Michael Kugelman, a South Asia expert at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, told reporters that the Taliban would find it difficult to consolidate power unless it tackles terrorism and a growing economic crisis.
“If the Taliban, as is likely, is unable to address these concerns, it will struggle to gain domestic legitimacy, and we could see the emergence of a new armed resistance,” Kugelman said.
The Taliban is seeking international recognition, as well as assistance to avoid a humanitarian disaster and ease Afghanistan’s economic crisis.
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