Blast kills at least 14 people in Afghan mosque
KABUL, Afghanistan — A bomb blast inside a mosque in eastern Afghanistan that was being used as a voter registration center killed at least 14 people and wounded 33, officials said on Sunday.
According to Bashir Khan, a spokesman for the police department in Khost province, explosives apparently had been hidden in the mosque and were detonated while some people were praying and others registering to vote.
Talib Mangal, spokesman for the provincial governor, said one woman was among those killed in the attack. “The blast happened while people were busy with prayers, meanwhile in other part of the mosque people had gathered to get their voter-registration cards for the election,” he added.
Afghanistan plans to hold elections in October, the first since 2014. Voter registration began on April 14, after voting cards issued in previous elections were invalidated because of widespread forgery. Citizens must now go to registration centers to have their national identity documents stamped to show that they can vote in the elections for the national parliament.
Habib Shah Ansari, the provincial head of public health, also confirmed the toll from the attack in the city of Khost, the capital of the province of the same name.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid denied the group’s involvement. “We reject any kind of involvement in this incident,” he said.
Both the Taliban and a local affiliate of the Islamic State extremist group reject democratic elections and have targeted them in the past. The Islamic State is not known to have a presence in Khost, but it has expanded its footprint into other areas in recent years.
The explosion was at least the sixth attack on voter-registration activities in Afghanistan since authorities last month began requiring citizens to register to vote in person at centers across the country.
Last month, an Islamic State suicide bomber attacked a voter-registration center in Kabul, killing 60 people and wounding at least 130 others.
The elections are three years behind the schedule mandated by the Afghan Constitution. A disputed presidential election in 2014 led to widespread disagreement among political parties about how to conduct elections, both for parliament this year and for the presidency in 2019.
Voter registration has proceeded very slowly, according to officials. In addition to the attack on a registration center in Kabul on April 22, there have been at least four other attacks reported on registration centers or officials since the voter drive began.
Maliha Hassan, an election commissioner, said that 1.2 million Afghans had registered to vote so far, out of what is believed to be 14 million who are eligible. The registration process ends June 15, which, at the current rate, would leave most Afghan voters unregistered.
“We don’t have a specific target for the number of people we expect to register,” Hassan said. “Let’s wait until the end of the process and see how many people register.”
Abdullah Abdullah, Afghanistan’s chief executive, in a recent speech blamed the slow registration drive on “insecurity, lack of trust in the government and lack of awareness.”
The Taliban and the Islamic State have launched a wave of attacks since the start of the year, killing scores of civilians in the capital, Kabul, and elsewhere. Afghan security forces have struggled to combat the groups since the U.S. and NATO concluded their combat mission at the end of 2014, switching to a counterterrorism and support role.
Elsewhere in Afghanistan, a vehicle carrying shopkeepers on their way to a market struck a roadside bomb in Afghanistan’s northern Faryab province, killing seven of them. Police spokesman Karim Yuresh said another civilian was wounded in Sunday’s attack, in an area where both the Taliban and Islamic State are active.
In the eastern Paktia province, a car bomb killed two people and wounded another three. Abdullah Hsart, the provincial governor’s spokesman, said the attack late Saturday targeted Hazart Mohammad Rodwal, a district chief, who was among the wounded. The Taliban claimed the attack.