KABUL: Taliban forces have arrested a suspected IS militant who allegedly planned a bomb attack that killed at least 12 worshippers at a mosque in Afghanistan, police said on Friday.
IS has claimed responsibility for the bomb blast that tore through the Seh Dokan mosque during midday prayers in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif on Thursday.
The attack also wounded 58 people.
Balkh province’s police spokesman Asif Waziri said Abdul Hamid Sangaryar was a key operative of IS.
“He was the mastermind of yesterday’s attack on the mosque,” Waziri said.
The country’s interior ministry also reported the arrest of Sangaryar, an Afghan national.
“He played a key role in several attacks in the past and had repeatedly managed to escape, but this time we arrested him in a special operation,” Waziri said.
IS also claimed a separate bomb attack in another northern city of Kunduz on Thursday that killed four people and wounded 18 people.
The Taliban authorities meanwhile stepped up security across Kabul’s main mosques as worshippers performed Friday prayers in the holy month of Ramadhan.
Gun-toting Taliban fighters carried out body searches of hundreds of worshippers who arrived at the capital’s Abdul Rahman mosque, an AFP correspondent reported.
IS has taken responsibility for deadly attacks in Afghanistan even as the number of bombings have fallen since the Taliban seized power in August last year.
Earlier this week, at least six people were killed in twin blasts that hit a boys’ school in a neighbourhood of Kabul.
No group has so far claimed that attack. – AFP