10 killed in attack on Sufi shrine in Afghanistan: interior ministry
- People arriving for prayers “discovered bodies”: resident.
- Attacks regularly target rituals, gatherings in country.
- Explosion in Sufi mosque in April 2022 killed 33 people.
KABUL: Ten people were killed when a gunman opened fire on a Sufi shrine in Afghanistan’s northern Baghlan province, an interior ministry spokesman told AFP on Friday.
“A man fired on Sufis taking part in a weekly ritual at a shrine in a remote area of Nahrin district, killing 10 people,” the ministry’s Abdul Matin Qani said.
A Nahrin resident, who knew victims of the attack, told AFP that worshippers had gathered at the Sayed Pacha Agha shrine on Thursday evening.
They had begun a Sufi chant when “a man shot at the dozen worshippers”, he said on condition of anonymity.
“When people arrived for morning prayers, they discovered the bodies,” he added.
Attacks regularly target participants during rituals or gatherings in Afghanistan, a country with a very large Muslim majority but where the Taliban authorities impose a strict interpretation of Islamic law, or sharia, which is different from Sufism.
In April 2022, 33 people, including children, were killed in an explosion that targeted a Sufi mosque during Friday prayers in Kunduz province.
The number of bomb attacks has fallen since the Taliban authorities returned to power in 2021, but the regional branch of the Daesh, the Daesh Khorasan, still attack targets they consider heretical.
In September, the Daesh Khorasan claimed responsibility for an attack in central Afghanistan that killed 14 people who had gathered to welcome pilgrims returning from the holy site of Karbala in Iraq.
