Bomb in Mosque Wounds 10 in Southern Afghanistan

A bomb exploded in a mosque in southern Afghanistan during evening prayers, wounding 10 people, three of them seriously, the main preacher and officials said on Tuesday. The preacher at the mosque, in Kandahar city, supports Afghanistan’s U.S.-backed government. The blast ripped through the mosque during evening prayers on Monday, said Khalid Pashtun, spokesman for Kandahar’s governor. Pashtun accused remnants of the ousted Taliban regime for planting the bomb and said the mosque’s preacher, Mawlavi Abdullah Fayaz, had recently rejected a Taliban call for a jihad, or Muslim holy war, against the government. “Fayaz was the target because he also heads the council of Kandahar’s Ulema,” Pashtun said, referring to the city’s council of clerics. “They had said that jihad is not applicable against the government,” he said. Kandahar is a former bastion of the Taliban, who were driven from power by a U.S.-led offensive in late 2001, in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the United States. Fayaz also accused the Taliban of carrying out the attack. Full Story