Half of the mosque was full of worshipers, women upstairs and men downstairs, hundreds of men and women. Fourteen civilians were killed or wounded. A cleric who was leading the service was also killed, according to initial reports. The Taliban denied responsibility for the attack. It’s not clear if there were two or four attackers who had entered the compound. Special forces, using drone cameras and accompanied by bomb-sniffing dogs, scrambled to find a way into the compound.
Inside the mosque after attack
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack while the assault was still underway, the latest to target Afghanistan’s minority Shiites. Mohammad Salim Rasouli, chief of Kabul’s hospitals, said at least 20 were killed and 50 more were wounded, many of them children, in this attack. He even said the death toll could rise because many of the wounded were seriously hurt. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani condemned the attack and called Islamic clerics around the world to condemn terrorism. Last month, the Islamic State group attacked the Iraqi Embassy in Kabul and after took responsibility for a brutal suicide assault on a Shiite mosque in western Herat province that left 32 people dead after gunmen stormed the mosque.
