KABUL, Afghanistan — A blast struck a mosque at a government ministry building in the Afghan capital of Kabul on Wednesday as workers and visitors were praying, a Taliban official said.
The afternoon explosion went off inside the mosque of Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry, which is responsible for security and law enforcement in the country.
The Interior Ministry is in the Afghan capital, on the main road next to Kabul International Airport, and is in its own fortified compound.
The cause of the explosion wasn’t immediately known, but if it was an attack it would mean that assailants have struck at a center of Taliban power.
A Taliban-appointed spokesman for the ministry, Abdul Nafi Takor, said in a tweet: “Unfortunately there was an explosion inside a(n) ancillary mosque where some Interior Ministry workers and visitors were praying. Will share the details later.”
He did not say if the mosque was inside the ministry or near it. There was no immediate information about casualties. Nobody has claimed responsibility for the explosion, but the Islamic State group, the chief rival of the Taliban, has been waging a campaign of violence that has intensified since the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in August 2021.
The Interior Ministry mosque blast follows last week’s suicide bombing at an education center in Kabul that killed as many as 52 people, according to a tally compiled by The Associated Press, more than twice the death toll acknowledged by Taliban officials.
