Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid announced on Friday, Oct. 8: “This afternoon, an explosion took place in a mosque of our Shi’ite compatriots in the Khan Abad district of Bandar,” the capital of Kunduz province. He said that investigators were on their way to Bandar. Islamic State (IS) has taken credit for the suicide bombing during Friday afternoon prayers in the Gozar-e-Sayed Abad Mosque. The director of the culture and information department in Kunduz said that 43 people were killed and over 140 injured. Later, the state-run Bakhtar news agency put the death toll at 46, with 143 others wounded.
The bloody week started on Oct. 4 with an IS bombing at Kabul’s Eid Gah Mosque, followed by Taliban raids and arrests in Kabul of IS operatives from the group centered out of Khorasan, near the Pakistan border. (They are tagged as “ISIS-K"—the “K” standing for Khorasan, indicating ISIS in Afghanistan.)
