At least 62 people were killed in Afghanistan Friday after a bomb blast caused the roof of a mosque to cave in, according to officials.
The explosion at the mosque in Nangarhar province occurred during Friday prayers – and no one has come forward yet to claim responsibility for the attack.
“The number of casualties may rise as the rescue team and people are working to bring out the bodies from the rubble,” Sohrab Qaderi, a local government official, told Reuters.
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A wounded man is brought by stretcher into a hospital after an explosion at a mosque in Haskamena district of Jalalabad, east of Kabul, Afghanistan, on Friday.
(AP)
Another official reported that 62 people were killed and 36 were injured in the blast. Victims are still being assisted.
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Eyewitnesses told the BBC that the explosion caused the roof of the mosque to cave in.
Zahir Adil, a spokesman for the public health department in Nangarhar Province, said 23 of the wounded were transferred to Jalalabad, the provincial capital, and the rest were being treated in the Haskamena district clinic.
The violence comes a day after a United Nations report said that Afghan civilians are dying in record numbers in the country’s increasingly brutal war, noting that more civilians died in July than in any previous one-month period since the U.N. began keeping statistics.
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“Civilian casualties at record-high levels clearly show the need for all parties concerned to pay much more attention to protecting the civilian population, including through a review of conduct during combat operations,” said Tadamichi Yamamoto, the U.N. secretary-general’s special representative for Afghanistan.
In western Herat province, six civilians including four children also were killed Thursday when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb, said Jelani Farhad, spokesman for the provincial governor. He added that five other civilians were wounded in an attack in the Zawal district.
Fox News’ Thairy Lantigua and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
