A suicide bomb attack on worshippers at a Shiite mosque in the Afghan city of Kunduz has left no fewer than 55 people dead in what has been described as the bloodiest assault since US forces left the country in August.
Africa Daily News, New York reports that many of the victims from the minority community were wounded in Friday’s blast, an attack which has now been claimed by the Islamic State group.
The attack appears designed to further destabilise Afghanistan in the wake of the Taliban takeover.
The regional branch of the rabidly sectarian IS has repeatedly targeted Shiites 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.
‘Many of our neighbours have been killed and wounded. A 16-year-old neighbour was killed. They couldn’t find half of his body.’
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A medical source at Kunduz Provincial Hospital said 35 dead and more than 55 wounded had been taken there, while Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said 20 dead and several dozen wounded were brought to its hospital.
Matiullah Rohani, the Taliban government’s director of culture and information in Kunduz, confirmed it was a suicide attack, and put the death toll at 46.
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 Shiites and Sunnis.
Viewed as heretics by Sunni extremists such as IS, Shiite Muslims have suffered some of Afghanistan’s most violent assaults, with rallies bombed, hospitals targeted and commuters ambushed.
Shiites 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 Shiite mosque in the west of Kabul, killing 56 people and wounding 55.
And in May this year, a series of bombings outside a school in the capital killed at least 85 people, mostly young girls. More than 300 were wounded in this attack on the Hazara community.
AFRICA DAILY NEWS, NEW YORK
