Death toll in Afghan mosque bombing rises to 33, Taliban say

FILE - This frame grab image from video, shows a Taliban fighter standing guard outside the site of a bomb explosion inside a mosque, in Mazar-e-Sharif province, Afghanistan, Thursday, April 21, 2022. (AP Photo, File)

KABUL, Afghanistan — A Taliban official says a bombing at a mosque and religious school in northern Afghanistan on Friday killed at least 33 people, including students of a religious school.

Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban's deputy culture and information minister, said the bombing in the town of Imam Saheb, in Kunduz Province, also wounded another 43 people, many of them students.

No one immediately claimed responsibility, but Afghanistan's Islamic State affiliate on Friday claimed a series of bombings that happened a day earlier, the worst of which was an attack on a Shiite mosque in northern Mazar-e-Sharif that killed at least 12 Shiite Muslim worshippers and wounded scores more.

Earlier the Kunduz provincial police spokesman put the death toll at the Malawi Bashir Ahmad Mosque and madrassa compound in Imam Saheb at two dead and six injured. Mujahid later tweeted the higher casualty numbers tweeting “we condemn this crime . . . and express our deepest condolences to the victims.”

Friday's bombing is the latest in a series of deadly attacks across Afghanistan. Mujahid called the perpetrator's of the Kunduz attack “seditionists and evil elements.”

Since sweeping to power last August, the Taliban have been battling the upstart Islamic State affiliate known as Islamic State in Khorasan Province or IS-K which is proving to be an intractable security challenge for Afghanistan's religiously driven government.

Last October the IS-K claimed a brutal bombing also in northern Kunduz province at a Shiite mosque that killed at least 50 people and wounded more than 100. In November the Taliban's intelligence unit carried out sweeping attacks on suspected IS-K hideouts in eastern Nangarhar province, where the deadly affiliate is headquartered.

In a statement Friday, the IS-K said the explosive devise that devastated Mazar-e-Sharif's Sai Doken mosque was hidden in a bag left inside among scores of worshippers. As they knelt in prayer, it exploded.

“When the mosque was filled with prayers, the explosives were detonated remotely,” the ISIS statement said, claiming that 100 people were injured.

The Taliban say they have arrested a former IS-K leader in northern Balkh province, of which Mazar-e-Sharif is the capital. Zabihullah Noorani, information and culture department chief in Balkh province, said Abdul Hamid Sangaryar was arrested in connection with Thursday's mosque attack.

The IS-K had been relatively inactive in Afghanistan since last November, but in recent weeks have stepped up its attacks in Afghanistan and in neighboring Pakistan, taking aim at Shiite Muslim communities reviled by Sunni radicals.

Earlier this month two bombs exploded in Kabul's Shiite neighborhood of Dasht-e-Barchi, killing at least seven students and wounding several others.

The IS-K established its headquarters in eastern Afghanistan in 2014 and have been blamed for some of the worst attacks in Afghanistan, including a vicious assault on a maternity hospital and at a school that killed more than 80 girls in 2021, months before the Taliban took power.

The IS-K also took responsibility for a brutal bombing outside the Kabul International Airport in August 2021 that killed more than 160 Afghans who had been pushing to enter the airport to flee the country. Thirteen U.S. military personnel also were killed as they oversaw America's final withdrawal and the end of its 20-year war in Afghanistan.

In recent months, the IS-K has also stepped up attacks in neighboring Pakistan, targeting a Shiite mosque in the northwestern city of Peshawar in March. More than 65 worshippers were killed. The upstart affiliate has also claimed several deadly attacks against Pakistan's military .

In Pakistan's central Punjab city of Faisalabad, the local police on Thursday issued a threat warning, saying “it has been learned that IS-Khas planned to carry out terrorist activities in Faisalabad,” advising people to “exercise extreme vigilance.” The police warning did not elaborate.

Meanwhile late on Thursday a Pakistani soldier was killed in southwestern Baluchistan province after militants raided a security outpost. No one claimed responsibility. The area has been targeted by both IS-K as well as the violent Pakistani Taliban militants known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) also headquartered in neighboring Afghanistan.

The safe havens of militant groups in Afghanistan has raised concerns for Pakistan which earlier this month carried out air strikes inside Pakistan, killing at least 20 children, according to the United Nations education fund (UNICEF).

Pakistan has not confirmed the strikes but has warned Afghanistan's Taliban to stop its territory being used to attack across the border into Pakistan.

In separate incidents, five children were killed Friday in northern Afghanistan's Faryab Province while playing with unexploded ordnance. In one incident, three brothers died when they found an unexploded device and tried to dismantle it. In a second incident in another village, two children, ages 7 and 8, were killed playing with a device, said Shamsullah Mohammadi, Faryab provincial information and culture head.

After more than four decades of war, that included two invasions - one by the former Soviet Union and one by the U.S.-led coalition - Afghanistan is one of the heaviest mined countries in the world and is littered with unexploded ordnance.

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Gannon reported from Islamabad. Associated Press Writer Tameem Akhgar in Islamabad, Asim Tanvir in Multan, Pakistan and Maamoun Youssef in Cairo contributed to this report