Grief, outrage after IS attack on mosque
Angry mourners rail against terrorist group after 33 die in assault
THOUSANDS of Shiite protesters chanted slogans against the Islamic State group yesterday as they carried the coffins of victims of a mosque attack that killed 33 people in the western Afghan city of Herat.
Up to 5 000 angry mourners, including relatives of the dead, congregated near the site of Tuesday’s suicide bomb attack as IS claimed responsibility for the latest atrocity targeting the minority community.
“Death to Daesh (IS)!” and “Down with fundamentalism”, the demonstrators chanted, as the coffins were brought one by one and placed in a refrigerated truck near the Jawadya mosque.
Jilani Farhad, a spokesman for the governor of Herat province, said the death toll from the attack, in which two suicide bombers throwing grenades stormed the packed mosque, had risen to 33. Another 66 were wounded.
It came a day after IS claimed a deadly assault on the Iraqi embassy in Kabul as it extends its footprint in the wartorn country.
Underscoring the nation’s insecurity, a Taliban suicide bomber yesterday rammed a vehicle filled with explosives into a convoy of foreign forces in the restive southern province of Kandahar, causing an unspecified number of casualties.
Shiites, a minority of about three million in overwhelmingly Sunni Afghanistan, have regularly been targeted by IS jihadists over the last year. They accuse police and troops of failing to protect them.
“I lost all my loved ones. They even killed children as young as seven. This wasn’t an attack on Shiites, this was an attack on all Afghans, all Muslims,” Farhad Dost said.
Members of the Shiite community said police had fled their check-post, about 100m from the mosque, after the two attackers struck on Tuesday.
The governor’s spokesman said the police chief of the district had been suspended for negligence and a delegation from Kabul had been sent to investigate the attack.
In a statement yesterday, IS’s propaganda outlet, Amaq, claimed it had killed about 50 Shiites and wounded 80 more in the attack, which also left young children dead.
Witnesses described scenes of terror and chaos, with emergency wards overwhelmed and survivors rushing victims to hospital in their own vehicles and even on foot.
“There weren’t enough ambulances . . . I tried to take a small child to hospital but he died in my hands,” Ali, who only gave one name, said.
Farhad Afshar rushed to the mosque, where worshippers had gathered for prayers, after hearing the explosion.
“When I arrived the mosque was full of flesh and blood. I saw a mother crying and searching for her two children. She found one wounded inside the mosque, the other was found dead in an ambulance,” he said.
Quoting survivors, he said the attackers had first opened fire on the worshippers and then thrown grenades before finally blowing themselves up inside the mosque.
IS has claimed responsibility for a series of attacks killing dozens of Shiites in Kabul over the past year, including twin explosions in July last year that ripped through crowds of Shiite Hazaras, killing at least 85 people and wounding more than 400.
Meanwhile, in yesterday’s attack a Taliban suicide bomber rammed a vehicle filled with explosives into a convoy of foreign forces in Afghanistan’s restive southern province of Kandahar, causing casualties.
“At around noon a car bomb targeted a convoy of foreign forces in the Daman area of Kandahar,” provincial police spokesman Zia Durrani said.
Nato confirmed a convoy had been attacked and had caused casualties but did not give further details.
At least one witness reported seeing three bodies pulled from one vehicle.
The assault is the latest blow to Nato forces, who ended their more than a decade-long combat mission in Afghanistan at the end of 2014.
The attacks come as US President Donald Trump weighs sending more American troops to Afghanistan nearly 16 years after the US invasion to topple the Taliban regime.