AFP :
Mourners from Afghanistan’s minority Shiite community buried their dead on Saturday after a suicide attack claimed by the Daesh group killed more than 60 people.
A gravedigger in the Shiite cemetery overlooking the northern city of Kunduz told AFP they had handled 62 bodies, and reports suggested a final toll of up to 100.
The blast targeted Friday prayers in the packed Sayed Abad mosque in the city, in an apparent attempt to stir trouble between Shiites and Afghanistan’s Sunni majority.
The Daesh group has claimed responsibility for the attack, which the new Taliban security forces in Kunduz said was carried out by a suicide bomber.
The hard-line Sunni movement has vowed to protect Shiites, who have faced persecution in Afghanistan in the past, but the community in Kunduz has been traumatized by the violence.
In the cemetery, Zemarai Mubarak Zada told AFP he had come to bury his 17-year-old nephew Milad, who had wanted to follow in his footsteps and become a doctor.
“He didn’t talk much, but he was very calm,” the 42-year-old said of Milad. “He used to make sure nobody was upset by what he said or did.
“We are really hurt by what happened. He wanted to get married. He wanted to go to university.”
After an Islamic prayer was sung, men with shovels put back the earth over Milad’s grave as a young boy wailed inconsolably. The heart-wrenching scene was repeated dozens of times.
Reuters adds: A pile of sandals and bloodstained carpets remained at at the mosque on Saturday (October 9) a day after the attack.
Stunned family members gathered around wooden coffins waiting for burial.
The latest attack was the third this week on a religious institution.
Islamic State claimed responsibility for an attack that state-run Bakhtar news agency said had killed 46 people and wounded 143.
Two health officials told Reuters the death toll could be between 70 and 80.
The blast, which the United Nations’ mission in Afghanistan called part of a disturbing pattern of violence, follows others in recent days at a mosque in Kabul and a religious school in the eastern province of Khost.
There have been similar attacks in recent weeks, some of which have also been claimed by Islamic State, whose fighters are Sunni Muslims.
