Shiite minority’s mosques increasingly targeted

KABUL, Afghanistan — Dozens of men gathered in a dust-blown graveyard Saturday to pay their last respects to 83-year-old Karbalai Mohammad Anwar Noori, one of at least 50 people killed in a suicide bombing the night before at a nearby mosque in western Kabul.

As Noori’s sons and nephews fought back tears, a tall, turbaned cleric stood above the mound of freshly turned dirt where the shroudwrapped body was laid to rest. Speaking into a microphone, he invoked the words of Imam Jafar Sadiq, the sixth imam in Shiite Islam.

“Those who worship must be cautious and clever,” said the cleric, Abdulaziz Amiri. “It is not only up to the security forces to protect us. We must be prepared at all times and ready for any possible attack.”

Threats are increasing for Afghanistan’s Shiite minority, the targets of a spate of recent attacks that have highlighted the government’s inability to secure places of worship and added a troubling sectarian dimension to the country’s long-running conflict.

In the first nine months of this year, 84 Afghan Shiites were killed and 194 wounded in attacks on mosques or religious gatherings, according to United Nations figures.

Those numbers rose sharply after Friday evening, when a suicide bomber hurled a grenade at worshipers before blowing himself up near the front of the crowded Imam Zaman mosque, which sits along a busy road in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood. Dozens were wounded, officials said.

The bombing was claimed by Islamic State’s South Asia affiliate. The Sunni extremist group views Shiites as apostates.

On Saturday, an unrelated suicide attack outside the training academy of the Marshal Fahim National Defense University west of Kabul killed 15 and wounded four others, according to Dawlat Waziri, spokesman for the defense ministry. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, according to their spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid, who said that 27 academy members were killed.