At least 32 people have been killed and 53 wounded in bomb blasts at a Shia mosque at the centre of Afghan city of Kandahar during busy Friday prayers.

The cause of the explosions on Friday was not immediately clear, but they came a week after a suicide attack on Shia worshippers at a mosque in the northern city of Kunduz that was claimed by Daesh group.

“Thirty-two bodies and 53 wounded people have been brought to our hospital so far,” a doctor at the city’s central Mirwais hospital told AFP.

Other medical sources and a provincial official confirmed a toll of more than 30, and at least 15 ambulances were rushing to and from the scene.

The mosque’s Facebook account made an appeal for blood donations.

An eyewitness told AFP he heard three explosions, one at the main door of the mosque, another at a southern area, and a third where worshippers wash before their prayers.

Another witness also said that three blasts rocked the mosque in the centre of the town during Friday prayers, the busiest congregation of the week.

AFG Massacre of worshippers inside the BiBi Fatima mosque in PD1, Kandahar city. Afghanistan’s Shia community continues to pay a very heavy price and they remain extremely vulnerable . #NOTJUSTNUMBERSLIVES pic.twitter.com/G9g5Z1aeRR

— BILAL SARWARY (@bsarwary) October 15, 2021
“We are saddened to learn that an explosion took place in a mosque of the Shiite brotherhood in the first district of Kandahar city in which a number of our compatriots were martyred and wounded,” said interior ministry spokesman Qari Sayed Khosti, of the Taliban movement that rules Afghanistan.

Nematullah Wafa, a former member of the local provincial council, said the blast on Friday occurred at the imambargah, a mosque for Shia Muslims, and caused heavy casualties.

Authorities were collecting details of the explosion, spokesperson of the acting Taliban government’s interior ministry Qari Saeed Khosti said.

Taliban members blocked all roads leading to the mosque where the attack took place.

The blast took place days after Daesh claimed a bombing at a Shia mosque in the northern city of Kunduz that killed at least 46 people.