At least 11 people were killed and 30 injured on Thursday in an attack on a mosque in northern Afghanistan, where the funeral of a governor whose assassination was alleged by the Islamic State group on Tuesday was taking place.
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“Today at around 11 o’clock the enemies of Islam blew up the Nabawi Mosque in the city of Faizabad (…) while a large number of compatriots attended the ceremony in honor of Nisar Ahmad Ahmadi, the governor of Badakhshan province, participated , explained the Afghan Ministry of the Interior.
The ministry condemned “the brutality of dishonored enemies”.
“I was standing in front of the mosque to greet the guests when suddenly a terrible noise shook the mosque,” Naseer Ahmad told AFP.
“When I entered the mosque, I saw bloody corpses lying on the ground,” added the 37-year-old.
An AFP reporter near the site of the blast noted that Taliban government security forces had set up checkpoints around the burial site Thursday morning.
When the blast sounded, “people fled in panic to the surrounding streets and businesses were closed,” and security forces cordoned off the area, he added. At a local hospital, he was able to see ten bodies on stretchers.
“The United Nations Mission in Afghanistan (Manua) strongly condemns this attack and a recent series of appalling and indiscriminate attacks that show a total disregard for the lives of civilians,” Manua tweeted.
Security has improved dramatically since the Taliban took power in August 2021 and toppled the US-backed government, ending two decades of insurgency. However, the main security threat to the government remains the Islamic State (IS) group.
ISIS claimed responsibility for the killing of Nisar Ahmad Ahmadi, the governor of Badakhshan province on Tuesday. The man had been killed by a suicide bomber who rammed his vehicle with a car loaded with explosives.
The driver was also killed and six other people were injured.
Since the Taliban returned to power, IS has killed and injured hundreds in multiple attacks, some aimed at foreigners or foreign interests, with the aim of weakening the Taliban government.
ISIS and the Taliban share a strict Sunni Islamist ideology, but the former fights to establish a global “caliphate” while the latter wants to lead an independent Afghanistan.
On March 9, the governor of Balkh province (North), known for his fight against ISIS jihadists, was killed in his office in Mazar-i-Sharif in what the group claimed was a suicide attack.