Up to 60 people are feared dead after a huge bomb hit a mosque in Kabul during evening prayers on Wednesday.
The Taliban’s Kabul police spokesman Khalid Zadran told local media that there had been an explosion in the city’s 17th district, northern Kabul. Taliban forces are now at the scene.
Police have reported multiple casualties but did not say how many. Indian TV network TV9 reported that 60 people have been killed and more than 30 injured.
The Taliban intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the explosion occurred in a mosque among worshippers in Khair Khana area of Kabul.
The Imam of the mosque was said to be among those killed and the toll could still rise, the source added. Intelligence teams were at blast site and investigations were ongoing.
Emergency NGO, a Kabul hospital, tweeted that they had received 27 people so far following an explosion ‘in the PD17 area’.
‘5 children among them, including a 7-year-old,’ the official account added.
Witnesses said powerful explosion was heard in a northern Kabul neighbourhood, shattering windows in nearby buildings. Ambulances rushed to the spot.
‘A blast happened inside a mosque…. the blast has casualties, but the numbers are not clear yet,’ Kabul police spokesman Khalid Zadran told Reuters.
Other officials in the Taliban government did not reply to multiple requests to confirm the number of casualties.
Last Thursday a prominent Taliban cleric was murdered by a one-legged suicide bomber who had stuffed his artificial leg with explosives in Kabul today, according to officials and Taliban sources.
Sheikh Rahimullah Haqqani, who was in favour of female education in Afghanistan, was reportedly killed in an attack in a seminary when the attacker detonated explosives hidden in his plastic limb.
‘Very sadly informed that respected cleric (Sheikh Rahimullah Haqqani) was martyred in a cowardly attack by enemies,’ said Bilal Karimi, a spokesperson for the Taliban administration.
It was not immediately clear who was behind the blast although four Taliban sources told Reuters the attacker was someone who had previously lost his leg and had hidden the explosives in a plastic artificial leg.
The BBC reported the Islamic State (IS) group, which has targeted the cleric in the past, took responsibility for the attack, adding that it had happened inside his office.
One senior Taliban official of the interior ministry, referring to the group’s name for its administration, said of the attack: ‘We are investigating who this … person was and who had brought him to Read More
Source:: Nigerian Chatter
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