(Updates casualty toll, adds detail)
KABUL, Oct 15 (Reuters) - A large explosion tore through a
Shi'ite mosque in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar during
Friday prayers, killing at least 15 people and wounding 31, with
the casualty toll likely to rise, officials said.
Taliban interior ministry spokesman Qari Saeed Khosti said
authorities were collecting details of the explosion, which took
place days after a suicide bomb attack claimed by Islamic State
(ISIS) on a Shi'ite mosque in the northern city of Kunduz that
killed scores of people.
Photographs and mobile phone footage posted by journalists
on social media showed many people apparently dead or seriously
wounded on the bloody floor of the Imam Bargah mosque.
A health official said 15 dead and 31 wounded had been
brought to the city's Mirwais hospital but the total was
expected to rise, with ambulances still bringing victims in.
Taliban special forces arrived to secure the site and an
appeal went out to residents to donate blood for the wounded.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
The blast, coming so soon after the Kunduz attack underlined
the increasingly uncertain security in Afghanistan as the
Taliban grapple with an escalating economic and humanitarian
crisis that threatens millions with hunger.
The local affiliate of ISIS, known as Islamic State
Khorasan, after an ancient name for the region covering
Afghanistan, has stepped up attacks following the Taliban
victory over the Western-backed government in Kabul in August.
Taliban officials have played down the threat from Islamic
State but the repeated attacks have tarnished its claim to have
brought peace to Afghanistan after four decades of war.
The fact that the Shi'ite minority has again been targeted
may also inflame tensions among different ethnic and sectarian
groups in the largely Sunni country.
(Additional reporting by Jibran Ahmad, Islamabad bureau;
Writing by James Mackenzie; editing by John Stonestreet, Robert
Birsel)
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