“At least 47 people have been killed and 70 others wounded after an explosion went off inside a Shia mosque in Afghanistan’s southern city of Kandahar, according to a Taliban official. The explosion on Friday afternoon took place in the Bibi Fatima mosque, the largest mosque for Shia worshippers in the city,” reports Al Jazeera.
“Hafiz Sayeed, the Taliban’s chief for Kandahar’s department of culture and information, reported the number of dead and wounded. Interior ministry spokesman Sayed Khosti said on Twitter: ‘We are saddened to learn that an explosion took place in a mosque of the Shia brotherhood in the first district of Kandahar city in which a number of our compatriots were martyred and wounded.’ Taliban special forces arrived in the area ‘to determine the nature of the incident and bring the perpetrators to justice’, he added.”
“The Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISIS-K) claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement posted by its Amaq news agency later on Friday. ‘The first suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest… in an a mosque hallway, while the second suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest in the mosque’s centre,’ the armed group said in a statement.”