More than 50 Shia worshippers killed in mosque attack
ISLAMIC State group has claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack at a Shia mosque in the Afghan city of Kunduz that killed more than 55 people.
Scores more from the minority community were wounded in Friday’s blast which appeared to be designed to further destabilise Afghanistan in the wake of the Taliban takeover.
The regional branch of the sectarian IS has repeatedly targeted Shia in Afghanistan. It is a Sunni Islamist group like the Taliban, but the two are bitter rivals.
“It was a very terrifying incident,” said a teacher in Kunduz, who lives near the mosque in Kunduz.
“Many of our neighbours have been killed and wounded. A 16-year-old neighbour was killed. They couldn’t find half of his body.”
Images from the scene showed debris strewn inside the mosque, its windows blown out by the explosion.
Some men were seen carrying a body draped in a bloody sheet to an ambulance.
While there were conflicting eyewitness reports about the death and injury toll, a medical source at Kunduz Provincial Hospital said 35 bodies and more than 55 wounded had been taken there, while Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said 20 bodies and several dozen wounded were brought to its hospital.
Aminullah, an eyewitness whose brother was at the mosque, said: “After I heard the explosion, I called my brother but he did not pick up.
“I walked towards the mosque and found my brother wounded and faint. We took him to the MSF hospital.”
Zabihullah Mujahid, spokesperson for the Taliban, said investigators were working at the scene of the explosion, adding that the explosion claimed the lives of “compatriots”.
Matiullah Rohani, the Taliban government’s director of culture and information in Kunduz, confirmed it was a suicide attack.
Earlier in the week, IS claimed responsibility for two attacks: an explosion near Eid Gah mosque in Kabul which killed 12 people and injured 32 others, and a hand grenade attack at a religious school in the eastern Afghan province of Khost killing seven people.
Three people were arrested in connection with the school attack, Sputnik reported, quoting a spokesperson for the interim government.
The Taliban have been seeking to consolidate power but still face attacks from the regional IS branch, called Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K).
The Taliban security chief in the northern city accused the mosque attackers of trying to foment trouble between Shias and Sunnis.
“We assure our Shia brothers that in the future, we will provide security for them and that such problems will not happen to them,” Mulawi Dost Muhammad said.
Residents of the city, the capital of Kunduz province, told AFP the mosque blast happened during Friday prayers.
One witness, Rahmatullah, said 300 to 400 worshippers were inside.
UN chief Antonio Guterres called for the perpetrators to be brought to justice.
He condemned the third attack against a religious institution in Afghanistan in a week, his spokesperson said.
Viewed as heretics by Sunni extremists such as IS, Shia Muslims have suffered some of Afghanistan’s most violent assaults, with rallies bombed, hospitals targeted and commuters ambushed.
The Shia community make up about 20 percent of the Afghan population. Many of them are Hazara, an ethnic group that has been persecuted for decades.
In October 2017, an IS suicide attacker struck a Shia mosque in the west of Kabul, killing 56 people and wounding 55.
And in May this year, bombings outside a school in the capital killed at least 85 people. More than 300 were wounded in this attack on the Hazara community.
Michael Kugelman, a South Asia expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, told AFP the Taliban would find it difficult to consolidate power unless they tackled terrorism and the growing economic crisis. “If the Taliban, as is likely, is unable to address these concerns, it will struggle to gain domestic legitimacy, and we could see the emergence of a new armed resistance,” he said.
The Taliban are seeking international recognition, as well as assistance to avoid a humanitarian disaster and ease Afghanistan’s economic crisis.
Meanwhile, the US held its first face-to-face talks with the Taliban at the weekend in Doha since it withdrew its troops from Afghanistan.
The US delegation planned to press the Taliban to form an inclusive government with broad support, a State Department spokesperson said, stressing it did not indicate Washington recognised Taliban rule.
Indo-Asian News Service reported the American delegation included officials from the Central Intelligence Agency, the State Department, and the US Agency for International Development. But US Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad, who has for years spearheaded Washington’s dialogue with the Taliban in the Qatari capital and been a key figure in peace talks, would not be part of the delegation.
Acting Foreign Minister Amirkhan Motaqi was leading the Afghan Taliban delegation in Doha comprising cabinet officials.
Russia said last week it would also invite representatives of the Taliban to take part in international talks on Afghanistan later this month, the Interfax news agency reported.
President Vladimir Putin’s special representative on Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, said earlier a round of talks would be held in Moscow on October 20.