At least 35 dead from blast at Shi'ite mosque in Afghan city
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KABUL • A large explosion tore through a Shi'ite mosque in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar yesterday, killing at least 35 people. It is the second week in a row that militants have targeted Friday prayers and killed dozens of worshippers from the minority sect.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for yesterday's attack in Kandahar, but Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants claimed the similar bombing that killed scores of Shi'ites in the northern city of Kunduz a week earlier.
The strikes have caused shock and terror among members of Afghanistan's Shi'ite minority and undermine the ruling Taliban's claim to have restored security since taking control of the country in August.
A health official at Kandahar's Mirwais hospital told Reuters it had confirmed 35 dead and was treating 68 wounded.
A Kandahar reporter told Reuters that eyewitnesses had described three suicide attackers, one of whom blew himself up at the entrance to the mosque while the other two detonated their devices inside the building.
"The situation is very bad. Mirwais hospital is messaging and calling on young people to give blood," he said.
Photographs and mobile phone footage posted by journalists on social media showed many people apparently dead or seriously wounded on the bloody floor of the Imam Bargah mosque.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said security forces had been ordered to capture the perpetrators and bring them to justice under Islamic law.
Estimates of the death toll in last week's Kunduz attack have varied, with some reporting it as high as 80.
ISIS' Sunni Muslim fighters have often targeted Shi'ites in the past with large-scale attacks intended to kill civilians, including one that killed scores of schoolgirls in a Shi'ite district of Kabul in May last year.
The Taliban rulers are also strict Sunni Muslims but consider ISIS their enemy and have pledged to protect all ethnic and sectarian groups since sweeping into power in August as US forces withdrew.
The embassy of Iran, Afghanistan's neighbour and the region's largest Shi'ite power, condemned the attack.
"We hope Taliban leaders take decisive action against these wicked terrorist incidents," it said in a tweet.
The UN mission in Afghanistan said those responsible should be held to account.
REUTERS
