At least 15 injured after bomb attack on mosque in Afghanistan

At least 15 people were injured, some seriously, in a bomb attack on Friday at a mosque in eastern Afghanistan's Nangarhar province, in a fresh attack on a temple on the Muslim holy day.

The blast occurred around noon during Friday prayers at a mosque in Reli village in Nangarhar's Spinghar district, Taliban provincial spokesman Hanif Nangerhary told Efe.

"Unfortunately enemies of Islam and Afghans planted explosives inside the mosque. (At least) 15 people were injured, but fortunately we don't have any information about the dead yet," Nangerhary said.

One of the faithful who was in the mosque, Hamidullah Lawang, told Efe that the bomb was placed under the "mehrab", the place where the imam is located, and "the explosion occurred when the people were listening to the speech" of the religious figure.

"Our imam is seriously injured and others less so. The windows and doors of the mosque were broken," Lawang revealed.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, although last month the jihadist group Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility for two major suicide attacks on mosques in Afghanistan.

On those two occasions the temples belonged to the Shiite minority, although according to initial information on this occasion the worshippers did not profess that branch of Islam, considered apostate by the IS jihadists, who have their stronghold in Nangarhar.

These attacks took place on two consecutive Fridays, on 8 and 15 October, in the northern province of Kunduz and in the southern province of Kandahar, leaving at least 80 and 60 people dead and more than a hundred wounded respectively.

At the time, the Shi'ite community criticised the fact that the Taliban had confiscated all or most of their weapons, making it almost impossible to protect themselves against such suicide attacks.

The jihadist group has multiplied its attacks in Afghanistan since the final withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan shortly before midnight on 31 August, the largest of which was the bombing of Kabul airport on 26 August that killed some 170 people.

The Taliban have launched a series of operations across much of the country against IS, which are still ongoing, in which dozens of jihadists have been killed or arrested in at least eight of Afghanistan's 34 provinces.

Analysts and experts have noted that the jihadist group has become the biggest security threat to the Taliban government in Afghanistan, being behind almost daily attacks against the fundamentalists.