At least three people were killed and around 20 others injured in an explosion at a mosque in the Afghan capital Kabul on Wednesday, according to hospitals and the police.
The blast happened “in a mosque (…) during evening prayers” in the north-west of the city, Kabul’s police spokesman Khalid Zadran told AFP, citing the “wounded” but without being able to give a numbered assessment.
Italian NGO Emergency, which runs a hospital in the capital, said it received 27 victims of the blast, three of whom died.
“Most of the patients we admitted to a mosque after the explosion sustained injuries from shrapnel and burns,” the NGO told AFP in an email.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid also did not call for punishment but tweeted condemning the blast and asking to “pray for the martyrs” and promising that the “killers” would be “punished soon”.
This attack comes almost a week after the deaths of a Taliban cleric and his brother in a suicide bombing at a madrasa in Kabul claimed by the Islamic State organization (IS).
Since the Taliban came to power a year ago, the number of attacks in Afghanistan has decreased, but they have not stopped.
Several deadly attacks occurred in August, most notably in late April, during the holy month of Ramadan, and a series of bomb blasts also hit the country in late May, killing dozens of people.
Most have been claimed by IS, which targets mainly Afghan Shia, Sufi and Sikh religious minorities, but also the Taliban.
The latter claim to have defeated ISIS in the country and arrested dozens of jihadists, but analysts believe the extremist group is still the biggest security challenge for the new Afghan power.