Explosion hit Shiite mosque during Friday prayers in Afghanistan’s Kandahar. The blast at the mosque in the centre of the city took place during Friday prayers, the Associated Press reported. A doctor at the city’s central Mirwais hospital told AFP, “Thirty-two bodies and 53 wounded people have been brought to our hospital so far.”

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“Our initial information shows it was a suicide bomber who blew himself up inside the mosque,” a local Taliban official told AFP.

A spokesman of the Taliban government’s interior ministry revealed that the explosion caused heavy casualties. Qari Sayed Khosti informed that the authorities were collecting details of the explosion. 

“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,” Qari Sayed Khosti said in a tweet. 

“Special forces of the Islamic Emirate have arrived in the area to determine the nature of the incident and bring the perpetrators to justice.”

Nematullah Wafa, a former member of the provincial council, said, “the blast occurred at the Imam Bargah and caused heavy casualties but there was no immediate confirmation of the number of dead and wounded.” There was no immediate claim of responsibility either. 

This comes days after a  suicide bomb attack on a Shia mosque in the northern city of Kunduz that resulted in the death of many people and was later claimed by Islamic State.

The blast, just days after the Kunduz attack, serves as an indication of the increasingly uncertain security in Afghanistan, following Islamic State’s move of stepping up operations after the Taliban takeover of the Western-backed government in Kabul in August. 

The United Nations in Afghanistan expressed that it is “deeply concerned by reports of very high casualties” in Friday’s attack, calling it a “part of a disturbing pattern of violence”.