At Least 32 Killed, 53 Injured In Blast At Shia Mosque In Afghanistan

Kandahar: At least 32 people were killed and 53 injured after blasts tore through a Shiite mosque in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar during Friday prayers.

A doctor at the city’s central Mirwais hospital told AFP: “Thirty-two bodies and 53 wounded people have been brought to our hospital so far.”

The attack on a Shiite mosque in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar was carried out by a suicide bomber, a Taliban official said Friday.

“Our initial information shows it was a suicide bomber who blew himself up inside the mosque,” a local Taliban official told AFP on condition of anonymity, adding an investigation had been launched.

The mosque’s Facebook account made an appeal for blood donations.

“We are saddened to learn that an explosion took place in a mosque of the Shiite brotherhood in the first district of Kandahar city in which a number of our compatriots were martyred and wounded,” tweeted interior ministry spokesman Qari Sayed Khosti, of the Taliban movement that rules Afghanistan.

Graphic images posted to social media, which could not be immediately verified, showed bodies lying on the floor of the Fatemieh mosque.

Last Friday, an Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K) suicide bomber targeted a Shiite mosque in Kunduz, killing scores of people.