A Taliban spokesman said a bomb blast ripped through a mosque during Friday prayers in northern Afghanistan, killing atleast 33 people and injuring 43 more. Just a day earlier, the Daesh group claimed two separate attacks.
After Taliban fighters ousted the US-backed government last year. The number of bombings declined, but the Daesh continued to attack targets they consider heretical.
This week, bombings rocked the country, targeting a school and a mosque in Shiite neighborhoods.
According to Zabihullah Mujahid, Taliban government spokesman, atleast 33 people, including children, died in an bomb explosion at a mosque in Kunduz province.
“Our deepest sympathies are extended to the bereaved and the 43 others wounded by this crime,” he said.
According to social media images posted in the Imam Sahib district, north of Kunduz city, the Mawlavi Sikandar mosque, popular with Sufis, has holes blown through its walls.
Mohammad Esah, a shopkeeper who helped ferry victims to the district hospital, said: “The sight inside the mosque was horrific. All the worshippers either injured or killed.”
Earlier in the day, another resident said that he saw 20 to 30 bodies at the scene.
Families of victims arrived at the hospital to look for their loved ones.
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The Taliban and Daesh are bitter rivals.
The Taliban’s most significant ideological difference is that they only seek an Afghanistan free of foreign forces. Contrary to this, Daesh wants to establish an Islamic caliphate from Turkey to Pakistan.
On Thursday, Daesh claimed responsibility for a bomb attack at a Shiite mosque in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif. It killed at least 12 worshippers and injured 58 others.
Moreover, A separate attack also reported in Kunduz city on Thursday. In which four people killed and 18 wounded.
Neither the Taliban nor any other group claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s twin explosions at a boys’ school in a Shiite neighborhood of Kabul,
which killed six and injured more than 25 people.
Taliban officials announced earlier on Friday that they had arrested Daesh’s “mastermind” of Thursday’s attack on the mosque in Mazar-i-Sharif.
Daesh remains a significant security challenge for the Taliban.