Afghanistan: explosions and several dead in a Shiite mosque of Kandahar

At least 32 people were killed and 53 wounded in these explosions at the time of the Great Friday Weekly Prayer.

Le Monde with AFP

At least 32 people were killed and 53 injured in explosions, Friday, October 15, in a Kandahar mosque, in southern Afghanistan, according to a doctor at the central hospital of this city. The explosion touched this Shiite place of worship, at the time of the Grande Weekly Prayer on Friday, according to a journalist from the France-Press agency (AFP) present on site.

“We are saddened to learn that an explosion took place in a mosque of the Shiite Brotherhood (…) of the city of Kandahar, in which a number of our compatriots were killed and wounded,” For its part tweeted the Spokesman Taliban from the Ministry of the Interior, Qari Sayed Khosti.

A witness, having required anonymity, told AFP hearing three explosions, one at the main door of the mosque, another in his southern part and the last at the place where believers come to do their ablutions.

About fifteen ambulances went on site, while Talibane security forces were deployed at the edge of the site, whose access remained blocked.

Several suicide attacks

First images from the interior of the mosque, can not be authenticated in the immediate future, showed large bodies on the floor of the Fatemieh mosque, also known as Imam Bargah mosque.

These explosions occur a week after a suicide bombing against a Shiite mosque of Kunduz (Northeast), claimed by the Islamic State Organization (EI) and who had been fifty victims. Five days earlier, another bomb attack against a mosque of Kabul, also claimed by the EI, had made five dead.

The Islamic state in Khorassan (EI-K), the local branch of the terrorist organization, claimed some of the most deadly attacks committed in recent years in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Including suicide attacks in mosques, hospitals and other public places. The group has, in particular, targeted Muslims he considers as heretics, including the Shiites of the Hazara minority.

/Media reports.