At least 3 dead after blast in Afghanistan
The explosion in Nangarhar province was the third major mosque bombing in 5 weeks in the country
JALALABAD: At least three people were killed and 15 wounded on Friday by a blast at a mosque in Afghanistan’s restive Nangarhar province, a hospital official told AFP.
Qari Hanif, the government spokesman for Nangarhar province, said the bomb appeared to have been planted inside the mosque in the town of Traili, located in the mountainous Spin Ghar area outside the provincial capital Jalalabad.
Photos taken by a resident and circulating in social media showed three dead bodies, and the mosque’s interior strewn with rubble and broken glass. Hanif did not immediately confirm any deaths.
“I can confirm a blast during Friday prayers inside a mosque in Spin Ghar district. There are casualties and fatalities,” a Taliban
A mosque after a blast, in Kunduz, Afghanistan last month.
official told AFP. “So far three killed, 15 wounded,” a doctor at the local hospital told AFP.
It was the third major mosque bombing in five weeks in Afghanistan. The earlier attacks came on successive Fridays last month, when IS suicide bombers and gunmen blasted worshippers from Afghanistan’s Shia Muslim minority, first in a mosque in the city of Kunduz, then one in the southern city of Kandahar.
This Friday’s bombing targeted Sunni Muslims in a province that has been a front line in
the battle between the Islamic State group and the Taliban. IS militants have been carrying out nearly daily shootings and bombings against Taliban fighters in Nangarhar province.
Since coming to power in Afghanistan three months ago, the Taliban have been waging a counter-insurgency campaign, vowing to put down the threat from IS which is an enemy of the Taliban. The two groups share a hardline interpretation of Islam and over the years engaged in some of the same violent tactics, such as suicide bombings. However,
the Taliban have focused on seizing control of Afghanistan, while IS adheres to global jihad. On Wednesday, a spokesman for the Taliban intelligence service told reporters in Kabul that the agency has arrested close to 600 IS members.
Around 3.2 million children are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition in Afghanistan by the end of this year, with 1 million of them at risk of dying, a World Health Organization spokesperson said on Friday.
“It’s an uphill battle as starvation grips the country,” Margaret Harris told Geneva-based journalists by telephone from the capital Kabul. “The world must not and cannot afford to turn its back on Afghanistan.”
Meanwhile, a raging measles outbreak has sickened thousands and killed nearly 100 in Afghanistan this year, the WHO also said. Since the start of the year, more than 24,000 cases of the highly contagious disease have been diagnosed clinically in Afghanistan, including 2,397 laboratory-confirmed cases.
“Sadly, we’ve had 87 deaths reported,” Harris said,