'Grim new precedent': Dozens killed at Afghan shrine

S. Sabawoon / EPA

A body is covered at the scene of an attack near a shrine in Kabul, Afghanistan.

By msnbc.com staff and news services

KABUL?-- A suicide bomber attacked a Shiite Muslim shrine in central Kabul on Tuesday where a crowd of hundreds had gathered for the festival of Ashoura, killing at least 30 people and injuring dozens more in an unprecedented sectarian attack.

The attacker blew himself up in the midst of a crowd of men, women and children. The mosque had been packed with worshippers and many who could not fit inside were?outside the building.

The blast came shortly after a bicycle bomb?near a mosque in the?northern city of?Mazar-e-Sharif killed at least four people.?Another?bomb in a motorcycle exploded in the southern city of Kandahar on Tuesday afternoon, injuring three civilians.

Afghanistan has a history of tension and violence between Sunnis and the Shiite minority but while such attacks have become commonplace in neighboring Pakistan and parts of the Middle East such as Iraq, they have not occurred in Afghanistan.

"Afghanistan has been at war for 30 years and terrible things have happened, but one of the things that Afghans have been spared generally has been what appears to be this kind of very targeted sectarian attack," Kate Clark, from the Afghanistan Analysts Network, told?Reuters.?"We don't know who planted the bomb yet and it is dangerous to jump to conclusions but if it was Taliban, it marks something really serious, and dangerous, and very troubling."?

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Updated at 5:15 a.m.: "The shrine's loudspeaker continued to blast a recitation of the Quran as ambulances carried bodies and wounded away," the Associated Press reports.?It adds that the Abul Fazl shrine is located close to the palace where President Hamid?Karzai lives.?Its blue minaret is one of Kabul's better known landmarks.??

Updated at 4:55 a.m. ET:?Britain's Telegraph newspaper reports that?"Shiites were banned from marking Ashoura in public under the Taliban who ruled Afghanistan until 2001. This year, there are more Ashoura monuments around the city than usual including black shrines and flags."

Updated at 4:35 a.m. ET: Jonathan Boone (@jon_boone), a Kabul-based correspondent for The Guardian, tweets quoting US General John Allen as describing the attack as "the latest example of the insurgents' blatant disregard for human life."

Updated at 4:25 a.m. ET:? Mohammad Bakir Shaikzada, the top Shiite cleric in Kabul, said that it was the first time that Shiites have been attacked in decades.?"This is a crime against Muslims during the holy day of Ashoura. We Muslims will never forget these attacks. It is the enemy of the Muslims who are carrying them out," he said. He did not know who could have carried out such an attack.

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Updated at 4:15 a.m. ET: Afghan President Hamid Karzai says it is first time that "terrorism" of this kind has occurred in the country on such a religious day, Reuters reports.

Updated at 4:10 a.m. ET:?Ahmad Shuja (@ahmadshuja),?director of Foundation for Afghanistan, tweets: "My hunch: Today's attacks WON'T, per se, touch off chain of sectarian violence. No Shiite group organized enough or duly experienced."

Updated at 4:00 a.m ET: NBC News cites a health official as saying that at least 50 people were injured in the Kabul blast.

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Updated at 3.55 a.m. ET: Mohammad Zahir, head of Kabul's Criminal Investigation Department,?told Reuters?he had counted up to 20 bodies at a Kabul hospital, and expected the toll to rise following the explosion at a Shiite shrine in the Afghan capital. A?second attack near the main mosque in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif?killed four people and injured 17 others.

Reuters journalists Mirwais Harooni and?Emma Graham-Harrison?point out that although "Afghanistan has a history of tension and violence between Sunnis and the Shiite minority ... since the fall of the Taliban the country had been spared the large scale sectarian attacks that have troubled neighboring Pakistan. The noon bomb in a riverside shrine, in the heart of old Kabul, appears to set a grim new precedent."

Updated at 3:47 a.m. ET:?At least?34 people were killed on Tuesday after blasts hit Shiite shrines in Afghanistan during the festival of Ashoura, Al Jazeera English reported citing local media reports and police.

Published at 3:30 a.m. ET: A blast at a shrine in Afghanistan's capital during the Shiite festival of Ashoura killed up to 24 people Tuesday, according to reports.

Meanwhile, four others were killed in the northern city of Mazar-I-Sharif when a bomb on bicycle exploded, Reuters said. The victims included a soldier.

The Kabul explosion was caused by a suicide bomber, Al Jazeera reported. It put the death toll at 24.

However, Hashmatullah Stanekzai, a spokesman for Kabul police, told the Associated Press that it wasn't clear if the explosives were planted in the shrine or if a suicide bomber was behind the attack.

The AP reported that at least 15 had been killed in the attack on the shrine, where worshippers were gathering for Ashoura, the Shiite Muslim holiday marking the death of Hussein, the grandson of Prophet Muhammad.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Source: http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/06/9240718-worshippers-killed-as-blast-hits-afghan-shrine

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