Suicide bomber kills at least 33 in Afghanistan, officials say

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Suicide bomber kills at least 33 in Afghanistan, officials say

KABUL - A large explosion tore through a Shiite mosque in the Muslim minority school in the southern Kandahar city, during Friday prayers, killing at least 33 people and wounding 73, officials said. This was the second major attack in a week targeting worshippers in the Shiite sect.

A local reporter in Kandahar told Reuters that eyewitnesses described three suicide attackers, one of whom exploded at the entrance to the mosque with the two others flaming their devices inside the building.

The situation is very bad. Mirwais Hospital is calling on young people to give blood, he said, referring to a local hospital where killed and injured had been taken.

A health official gave the figures of 33 injured and 73 dead and said the final total could be higher. It was immediate identification of the responsibility for the attack. Interior ministry spokesman Qari Saeed Khosti of the ruling Taliban movement said authorities were collecting details.

The blast took place just days after an attack claimed by Islamic State militants, which killed scores of Shiite worshippers in a mosque in the northern city of Kunduz. The full death toll from that attack was estimated as high as 80.

Sunni Islamic militants of Islamic State have repeatedly hit Shiites in the past. The Taliban are also strict Sunni Muslims, but have pledged to protect all ethnic and sectarian groups since sweeping into power in August as U.S. forces withdrew.

The embassy of Iran, a neighbor of Afghanistan and the region's largest Shiite power, condemned the attack.

We hope Taliban leaders take decisive action against these wicked terrorist incidents, says it in a tweet.

Special forces of Taliban arrived to secure the site and an appeal went out to residents to donate blood for wounded.

The blast, coming so quickly 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 Islamic State, which has emerged after an ancient name for the region covering Afghanistan as Khorasan, has stepped up attacks in August after the Taliban victory over the western government in Kabul in August.

Taliban officials have dismissed the threat from Islamic State and played down suggestions that they may accept U.S. help to fight the group. But the repeated attacks have tarnished their claim to have brought peace to Afghanistan after four decades of war.

The fact that the ethnic and sectarian minority was again targeted may also inflame tensions among Shiite minorities in the largely Sunni-Asia-Sunni country. In Afghanistan, most Shiites belong to the Pashtun-speaking group of Persian speakers who have complained in the past of persecution under the mainly Hazara population of Persian speakers.