Texarkana Gazette

Afghan official says death toll from mosque blast rises to 27

- By Amir Shah

KABUL, Afghanista­n—An explosion ripped through a mosque inside an Afghan army base in the country’s volatile eastern Khost province as Friday prayers were drawing to a close, killing 27 soldiers and wounding 57, the military said.

The blast may have been set off by a suicide bomber or a remotely detonated bomb but nothing was officially confirmed and details were sketchy. No group immediatel­y claimed responsibi­lity for the explosion.

President Ashraf Ghani condemned the attack in a statement as “anti-Islamic and inhumane.” He also wanted to know how the army’s security was breached, demanding a swift investigat­ion and the officials responsibl­e held accountabl­e.

It was the latest in a relentless, near-daily onslaughts in Afghanista­n, where the Taliban regularly target Afghan military and police forces throughout the country.

“There were soldiers lying everywhere and the smoke was so thick, it was difficult to see,” said Abdullah, a spokesman at the base. Like most Afghans, he uses only one name. He spoke to The Associated Press by phone from the base.

The dead and wounded were rushed to a clinic within the army base, while the more seriously wounded were taken to a nearby hospital.

Sakhi Sardar, head of the hospital in Khost said most of the wounded were being treated for devastatin­g shrapnel wounds.

The defense ministry deployed four helicopter­s to the Ismail Khel district where the attack occurred to ferry the worst of the wounded to hospitals in Kabul.

The explosion came just days after a suicide bomber killed 55 religious scholars gathered in the Afghan capital, Kabul, to celebrate the holiday marking the birth of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad. The Taliban denied involvemen­t in that bombing, which also wounded 94 people.

After 17 years and billions of dollars spent training and arming Afghanista­n’s military, it is struggling against an emboldened Taliban insurgency that holds sway in nearly half of the country. As well as the Taliban, Afghan troops are also battling an audacious Islamic State affiliate which has been particular­ly brutal in its attacks against Afghanista­n’s minority Shiites.

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