A suicide
bomber has blown himself up inside a Shia mosque in the Afghan capital Kabul,
killing at least 27 people and wounding dozens of others.
The explosion
happened at the Baqer-ul-uloom mosque in the Darul Aman area as people gathered
to mark the end of an important religious period.
Kabul police
chief Abdul Rahman Rahimi told Al Jazeera 27 people were killed and many others
wounded, and the death toll was likely to rise.
Fraidoon
Obaidi, chief of the Kabul police Criminal Investigation Department, said the
bomber mingled among the crowd on the first floor of the two-story mosque where
he detonated his explosives.
"I heard
a blast and dust covered the whole mosque," worshipper Nadir Ali told AFP
news agency.
"When the
dust settled down, I saw the mosque was full of flesh and blood. I was injured
in my waist and had to crawl out of the mosque."
The United
Nations said in a statement at least 32 had been killed and more than 50
wounded, including many children. It described the attack as "an
atrocity".
President
Ashraf Ghani in a statement condemned the "barbaric" attack.
Several police
vehicles raced from the scene and ferried the wounded to hospital.
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Worshippers
were gathering to mark the Shia ceremony of Arbaeen, which comes 40 days after
the major festival of Ashura.
Ashura
commemorates the death of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad who
was killed in in battle in 680 AD. His fate laid the foundation for the faith
practised by the Shia community, a minority in mainly Sunni-Muslim Afghanistan.
Arbaeen marks
the end of the mourning period over his death.
The ISIL group
claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement via its affiliated Amaq
website, after the Taliban said it was not involved.
Earlier this
year a powerful blast targeting Shiaworshippers during Ashura killed 14 people
in northern Afghanistan.
n July, ISIL
group claimed responsibility for twin explosions that ripped through crowds of
Shia Hazaras in Kabul, killing at least 85 people and wounding more than 400
others.
The bombings
marked the deadliest single attack in the capital since the Taliban were ousted
from power in the US-led invasion of 2001.
Shia Muslims
in Afghanistan make up an estimated 15 percent of the country's population of
about 30 million.
Their public
celebrations and commemorations were largely banned during the years when the
Taliban controlled the country. But Afghanistan's Shia community has become
more public since the Taliban was ousted.
Critics said
the government needs to do more to protect places of worship.
"Given
the level of Shia-Sunni polarisation in the region, more tragic attacks of this
sort are expected, while the Afghan government resorts only to verbal
condemnation of such acts," Al Jazeera's Afghanistan analyst Hashmat
Moslih said.
Amnesty
International also took the government to task.
"[Afghan
authorities] have a duty to take effective measures to protect Shia Muslims
from attacks," said Champa Patel, Amnesty's South Asia director.
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