MONITORING (SW) – The Islamic State group on Saturday claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack on a Shiite mosque in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar that killed at least 41 people and injured scores more.
The Friday assault came just a week after another IS-claimed attack on Shiite worshippers at a mosque in the northern city of Kunduz that killed more than 60 people, reported AFP.
The group, a bitter rival of fellow Sunni Islamist movement the Taliban, which swept back to power in Afghanistan in August as the United States and its allies withdrew, regards Shiite Muslims as heretics, it added.
ExTrac researcher Abdul Sayed told AFP the attack was “challenging the Taliban claims of holding control on the country. If the Taliban can’t protect Kandahar from an IS-K attack, how could it protect the rest of the country?”
In the wake of the explosions, Kandahar police chief Maulvi Mehmood said “a brutal attack has been witnessed on a Shiite mosque as a result of which a huge number of our countrymen have lost their lives”.
Hafiz Abdulhai Abbas, director of health for Kandahar, told AFP 41 people had been killed about 70 wounded, according to hospital information.
The US State Department spokesman Ned Price said Washington condemned the attack and reiterated a call for the “Taliban to live up to the commitment it has made to counterterrorism, and specifically to taking on the shared threat we face from ISIS-K”.
The UN mission in Afghanistan in a tweet also condemned the “latest atrocity targeting a religious institution and worshippers”.
The Taliban, which seized control of Afghanistan after overthrowing the US-backed government, has its own history of persecuting Shiites.
Shiites are estimated to make up roughly 10 percent of the Afghan population. Many of them are Hazara, an ethnic group that has been persecuted in Afghanistan for decades.
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