An explosion at a Shia mosque in the Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif on Thursday killed at least 11 people and injured 32, an Afghan health official said, in what was one of a series of attacks. explosions across the country.
The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, according to a statement on the group’s Telegram channel. They claimed to have placed a bag of explosives inside the mosque and activated the device when the place was full of worshipers.
Images posted on social media, whose authenticity could not be verified, show injured people being removed from the Seh Dokan mosque and taken to hospitals.
Residents of the area tried to help the victims and emergency teams tended to the survivors outside the mosque.
Another blast claimed at least 11 more casualties in Kunduz, in northern Afghanistan, according to Najeebullah Sahel, a provincial health official.
The blasts come during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, and just two days after blasts destroyed a high school in a predominantly Shi’ite area of the Hazara neighborhood in western Kabul, the capital, killing at least six.
The Shia community, a religious minority in Afghanistan, is often targeted by Sunni militant groups such as the Islamic State.
The Kunduz blast targeted a van of military mechanics on a street, the Interior Ministry said, adding that a third blast on a street in the capital injured three, including a child.
Richard Bennett, UN Special Rapporteur for Afghanistan on human rights, condemned the attacks.
“Today, more explosions rock Afghanistan. Systematic attacks targeting crowded schools and mosques demand immediate investigation, accountability and an end to human rights violations,” he wrote in a tweet.
A resident of Mazar-e-Sharif said she was shopping with her sister at a market when she heard a large explosion and saw smoke rising from the area around the mosque.
“The glass in the stores was broken and it was very crowded and everyone started running,” said the woman, who declined to be named.
The Taliban rulers in Afghanistan say they have increased security in the country since they took power in August after the total withdrawal of US troops from the territory.
But international officials and analysts say the risk of a resurgence in militancy remains, and the extremist group has since claimed several attacks.
The Taliban have tried to downplay the Islamic State threat and have fought the group for years. The terrorist group is accused of carrying out or claiming some of the most violent attacks in recent years in the country, such as the one in May 2021 in front of a school for girls in a Shiite neighborhood of Kabul, which killed 85 people.
There is also a suspicion that the group is behind the attack on a maternity hospital in Kabul in May 2020, in which 25 people died, including some who were close to giving birth.
