More than 100 dead and wounded in the explosion of a mosque in northeast Afghanistan

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KABUL – A suicide bomb tore through a mosque in Afghanistan’s northeastern Kunduz province on Friday, killing or injuring more than 100 people, a UN agency said.

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Video footage showed bodies surrounded by debris inside the mosque that is used by people from the Shiite minority Muslim community.

“Initial information indicates that more than 100 people were killed and injured in a suicide explosion inside the mosque,” the United Nations mission in Afghanistan said in a tweet.

Neither group immediately claimed responsibility. The blast followed several attacks, including one on a mosque in Kabul, in recent weeks, some of which have been claimed by Sunni Muslim militants of the Islamic State.

A Taliban official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said at least 28 people were killed and dozens more injured in Friday’s blast.

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The attacks have underscored the security challenges for the Taliban, who took over the country in August and have since carried out operations against Islamic State cells in Kabul.

“This afternoon, there was an explosion in a mosque of our Shiite compatriots … as a result of which several of our compatriots were martyred and wounded,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on Twitter.

Reference-torontosun.com

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