Attack on a Shia minority mosque in Afghanistan: at least ten dead

The explosion took place during the noon prayer at a Shiite mosque in the city of Mazar-e-Sharif, capital of Balkh province, where according to the initial count 10 people were killed and 20 others were injured, the provincial director of information and culture, Molavi Mohammad Norani, told Efe. The director of the Abu Ali Sina Regional Hospital, Ghousuddin Anwari, told the local channel Tolo the number of deaths at five and raised the number of wounded to 65.

This is the second day this week with major attacks against the Shiite minority in Afghanistan, after several explosions occurred on Tuesday at two schools in the Hazara Shi'a minority neighborhood of Dashte Barchi, in western Kabul, causing at least 6 dead and 25 wounded, according to official data. Several activists suggest, however, that the number of victims is significantly higher than that offered by fundamentalists, without providing a precise balance.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for these attacks, although they are often claimed by the jihadist group Islamic State (IS), which has among its main objectives the Shiites, whom it considers apostates. Last October, on two consecutive Fridays, the Shiite minority suffered two attacks on Shiite mosques in the northern province of Kunduz and in southern Kandahar. Those suicide bombings caused at least 80 and 60 deaths, and more than a hundred injured, and the last major attack on a mosque occurred on April 6, in which one person was killed and five others were injured when an individual threw a grenade during prayers in a important temple in Kabul. The Shia Hazara community experienced one of its worst attacks in the Afghan capital in May last year, when an attack on a girls school left 110 dead, mostly girls, and 290 injured, according to data from the Hazara Foundation.

KEEP READING: