Kabul: At least 47 people were killed and 70 others wounded after several explosions tore through a Shiite mosque during Friday prayers in the Afghan city of Kandahar, the Associated Press reported quoting a Taliban official.
Pictures inside the Bibi Fatima mosque showed shattered windows and bodies lying on the ground and other worshippers trying to help.
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A local Taliban official told the AFP news agency it was a suicide bombing.
Witnesses said they saw three attackers — one detonating a device at the main door and two inside the mosque.
Murtaza, who like many Afghans, goes by one name, said he was inside the mosque during the attack and reported four explosions: two outside and two inside.
Murtaza, in charge of security at the mosque, reported two bombers, one detonating explosive outside the mosque gate; by then, the second had already reached the worshippers inside the mosque.
He said the mosque’s security personnel shot a third suspected attacker outside the mosque.
Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-largest city, is the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban; hence such an attack by IS-K is a show of extreme hostility towards the Taliban by the terrorist organization.
