Gen. urges punishment for Afghanistan bombings perpetrators

MEHR: Condemning the recent serial bombings in Afghanistan, the Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces called for expedient measures to bring the perpetrators to justice and identify the root causes of such attacks.

In a message issued on Sunday, Major General Mohammad Hossein Bagheri condemned the recent terrorist attacks in Afghanistan and expressed sympathy with the families of the victims.

“Adoption of expedient measures as well as serious and practical steps ... to discover the reasons and causes of such disasters in addition to identification and categorical punishment of those groups and elements that are behind them is a necessity,” he said.

He added that the perpetrators of such terrorist acts have targeted the “security of this Islamic land, including its schools, mosques and [other] religious locations in line with the evil strategy of the White House and enemies of the Grand Prophet [of Islam].”

In the latest deadly attack in Afghanistan, at least 33 Afghan people, including children, were killed and 43 others wounded when an explosion tore through a mosque in the northern city of Kunduz on Friday.

It came only a day after a bombing at a mosque in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif killed at least 31 worshipers and injured more than 80 to mark the second major attack on the Shia Hazara community in Afghanistan in a week.

At least five people were killed and several dozen others injured in an earlier explosion that hit a Shia mosque in Mazar-i-Sharif on the same day.