Afghan official says death toll in mosque blast climbs to 27

KABUL, Afghanistan — An explosion ripped through a mosque inside an Afghan army base in the country’s volatile eastern Khost province as Friday prayers were drawing to a close, killing 27 soldiers and wounding 57, the military said.

The blast may have been set off by a suicide bomber or a remotely detonated bomb but nothing was officially confirmed and details were sketchy. No group im- mediately claimed responsibility for the explosion.

President Ashraf Ghani condemned the attack in a statement and also wanted to know how the army’s security was breached.

The explosion came just days after a suicide bomber killed 55 religious scholars gathered in the Afghan capital, Kabul, to celebrate the birth of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.