Eid al-Adha marred by mosque bombings, deaths
KABUL/KIRKUK—Festivities celebrating the year’s biggest Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha were marred by the bombing of mosques in Afghanistan and Iraq, which left at least 12 worshippers dead, including an Afghan provincial governor.
A bomb planted inside a mosque microphone killed Arsallah Jamal, the governor of Afghanistan’s eastern Logar province, as he was delivering a speech to worshippers on Tuesday morning to mark Eid al-Adha, officials said.
The explosion at the main mosque in the provincial capital of Puli Alam killed Jamal and wounded 15 people—five of them critically, said the governor’s spokesperson, Din Mohammad Darwesh.
Jamal, 47, was a close confidant of President Hamid Karzai and served as his campaign manager during the 2009 presidential election. He also served as governor of the eastern Khost province until he was appointed to his current post in Logar in April.
In Iraq, a bomb also ripped through a crowd of worshippers on Tuesday as they left a Sunni mosque in the northern city of Kirkuk after prayers marking Eid al-Adha. Eleven people were killed while 22 were wounded in the attack, sources said.
A photographer at the scene said bodies, their clothes covered in blood, were placed in the back of a small police pickup truck to be taken away. Bright red blood stained the street. Angry and grieving worshippers railed against those who carried out the attack, shouting, “God take revenge on those who are evil!”
Eid al-Adha is one of themost important holidays in the Islamic calendar. Muslims around the world slaughter sheep, cows and goats during the four-day holiday, giving away much of the meat to the poor. The holiday commemorates the readiness of the Prophet Ibrahim, known to Christians and Jews as Abraham, to sacrifice his son, Ismail, on God’s command.
Taliban, Shiites eyed
No one immediately claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attack but the Taliban have been targeting Afghan officials, military and Nato troops as part of their campaign to retake territory as international troops draw down ahead of a full pullout at the end of 2014.
A high-profile target, Jamal had survived a number of assassination attempts in the past, including with suicide bombings. They include two suicide attacks against his office in Khost in May and July 2009, and a suicide car bomb attack that targeted his convoy in August 2007.
The bombing of themosque in Kirkuk, on the other hand, is the latest incident in the escalating sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims in Iraq.
The latest unrest in Iraq takes the number of people killed so far this month tomore than 310, and to over 5,000 since the beginning of the year. Analysts say the surge in violence has been driven by the Shiite-led government’s failure to address the grievances of Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority.
In an Eid message from the secretive leader of the Afghan Taliban on Monday, Mullah Mohammad Omar pledged that his followers would keep fighting if the Karzai government signs a crucial security deal with the United States.
In the message, Omar also called on his fighters to intensify their insurgent campaign against Afghan and Nato forces, and urged all Afghans to boycott next year’s elections, including the vote to elect a successor to Karzai.
On Saturday, Karzai and US Secretary of State John Kerry reached an agreement in principle on the major elements of a deal that would allow American troops to stay in Afghanistan after 2014 and allow the United States to lease a number of military bases around the country.