A series of explosions rocked Afghanistan on Wednesday, the Taliban said, including an explosion inside a mosque in the capital of Kabul that killed at least five worshipers and three minivan bombings in the north of the country. kill nine more passengers.
Key points:
- A hospital in Kabul has received 22 victims of the attack on the mosque, including five dead
- The local subsidiary of the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the minivan attacks
- All the victims in Mazar-e-Sharif were from the country’s Shiite Muslim minority community.
The local subsidiary of the Islamic State (IS) group claimed responsibility for the minivan attacks.
Meanwhile, in the country’s capital, the Kabul Emergency Hospital said it had received 22 victims of the attack on the mosque, including five dead.
There were no further details about the blast that struck Hazrat Zakaria Mosque in the city’s 4th Central Police District, according to Khalid Zadran, a Taliban police spokesman in Kabul.
“The blast took place while people were inside the mosque for evening prayers,” Zadran said, adding that they were waiting for an update.
The minivans were attacked in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif after explosive devices were placed inside the vehicles, according to Mohammad Asif Waziri, a Taliban-appointed spokesman in Balkh province.
He said the blasts killed nine and injured 15.
The injured are being treated at a hospital in Mazar-e-Sharif. (AP: Masih Paeiz)
All the victims in Mazar-e-Sharif were from the country’s Shiite Muslim minority, according to a police officer who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not allowed to give details to the media.
The ISIS’s claim for responsibility was published on the Sunni militant group’s Aamaq news agency. The statement said ISIS had attacked three buses with improvised explosive devices.
There were no claims of responsibility for the Kabul mosque blast, but it also carried the badges of the regional affiliate of the Islamic State group, known as Islamic State in Khorasan Province, or IS-K.
The ISIS affiliate, which has been operating in Afghanistan since 2014, is considered the biggest security challenge facing the country’s new Taliban rulers.
Following the seizure of power in Kabul and other parts of the country last August, the Taliban launched heavy crackdown on ISIS headquarters in eastern Afghanistan.
AP