Afghan mosque bomb kills at least 17
A suspected suicide bomb attack at a mosque in the Afghan city of Kandahar has killed at least 17 people and wounded dozens of others today during the funeral of a cleric who spoke out against the Taliban.
An Associated Press reporter at the site in the southern city saw many body parts and clothes strewn around the building. Pools of blood lay on the mosque’s floor.
Kandahar’s deputy police chief, General Salim Khan, said the bomb exploded inside the mosque near where people remove their shoes before praying.
Seventeen people were killed and 72 wounded, four of them gravely, said Mohammed Hashim Alokozai, chief of Kandahar Hospital.
Police said the wounded included the police commander for the capital, Kabul, who had attended the funeral. The blast appeared to be the work of a suicide attacker, a police intelligence official at the mosque said.
“I was knocked unconscious by the blast. When I woke up, so many people were killed or wounded. People were running around, some were lying on the ground crying. Dead bodies were everywhere,” said Nanai Agha, who was inside the mosque but survived the blast.
The explosion occurred at the funeral of Mullah Abdul Fayaz at a mosque named after the cleric in the centre of Kandahar.
Fayaz, the top Muslim leader in the province and a supporter of President Hamid Karzai, was shot dead in Kandahar on Sunday by suspected Taliban gunmen - a week after he led a call for people not to support the rebels.
Kandahar was a stronghold of the Taliban regime that was ousted from power in late 2001 by US-led forces for harbouring al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
Taliban rebels and other militants opposed to Karzai’s US-backed government have stepped up their insurgency in recent weeks after a winter lull with a series of bombings and other attacks.
US-led coalition forces and Afghan troops have hit back hard, killing nearly 200 suspected insurgents and capturing dozens since March.
Kandahar has been hit by several bombings.
On March 17, a roadside blast killed five people and injured more than 30. Authorities blamed anti-government rebels for the attack, which took place as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was in the capital Kabul, about 280 miles to the north.
In January 2004, a bomb attached to a bicycle killed at least 15 people, most of them children, and injured dozens more in the city. Authorities blamed Taliban militants.
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