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Taliban interior ministry spokesman Qari Saeed Khosti said
authorities were collecting details of the explosion, which took
place days after a suicide bomb attack claimed by Islamic State
(ISIS) on a Shi'ite mosque in the northern city of Kunduz that
killed scores of people.
Photographs and mobile phone footage posted by journalists on
social media showed many people apparently dead or seriously
wounded on the bloody floor of the Imam Bargah mosque.
A health official said 15 dead and 31 wounded had been brought
to the city's Mirwais hospital but the total was expected to
rise, with ambulances still bringing victims in.
Taliban special forces arrived to secure the site and an appeal
went out to residents to donate blood for the wounded.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
The blast, coming so soon 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 ISIS, known as Islamic State Khorasan,
after an ancient name for the region covering Afghanistan, has
stepped up attacks following the Taliban victory over the
Western-backed government in Kabul in August.
Taliban officials have played down the threat from Islamic State
but the repeated attacks have tarnished its claim to have
brought peace to Afghanistan after four decades of war.
The fact that the Shi'ite minority has again been targeted may
also inflame tensions among different ethnic and sectarian
groups in the largely Sunni country.
(Additional reporting by Jibran Ahmad, Islamabad bureau; Writing
by James Mackenzie; editing by John Stonestreet, Robert Birsel)
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