A suicide attack on the mosque of Herat also ends the lives of 20 believers during the Friday prayer ceremony
The terror came to its rendezvous with Friday prayers in Afghanistan and yesterday at least 21 people lost their lives in a suicide bombing registered in Herat, in the western part of the country, targeting an important religious with links to the Taliban. The attack took place at the Guzargah Mosque, located on the outskirts of the city, just as the temple’s imam, Mujib Rahman Ansari, arrived. The suicide “blew itself up as he went to kiss his hands,” said Mahmoud Rasooli, a police spokesman in Herat. Leaders of the Islamic movement such as Zabihullah Mujahid condemned “the martyrdom of a brave and strong religious”.
Ansari was 38 years old and had the first meeting in the morning with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, co-founder of the Taliban and current Deputy Prime Minister. The perpetrators of the attack waited for him to arrive at the mosque to attack just before the start of the prayer. A direct blow to the movement that has been in power for a year in Afghanistan, which comes less than a month after the assassination of Rahimullah Haqqani, the victim of another suicide bombing at his madrasa (Koran school) in Kabul. Haqqani was known for his speeches against the jihadist group Islamic State (IS), which later claimed responsibility for the attack.
The Afghan website Khaama Press recalled the figure of an Ansari who made headlines in June after proclaiming at a large gathering of religious from around the country organized by the Taliban that “anyone who stands up against the emirate must be beheaded”. In Friday prayers, which he led from the previous government, he also preached to men whose wives do not cover themselves in public, calling them “cowards”, advising adulterers to stone or cut off the hands of thieves. During the pandemic, he defended that it was “a divine punishment for the extermination of non-Muslims”.
This special envoy interviewed Mullah Ansari on several occasions in his humble house at the gates of the Herat Mosque, the city where part of the Spanish contingent had been deployed. He was a very young religious with more power in this province in the west of the country than the governor or the chiefs of police and army.
The last call was in October 2009, a few days after the death of Spanish Corporal Cristo Ancor Cabello, 25, after an explosion when his armored car passed near Shinwashan, east of Herat. “The Taliban think as Muslims that if they give their lives, they will go to heaven. Can you tell me where a foreign soldier goes when he dies? Your churches are empty, you have no faith, only the path of Islam will save you from a certain hell”, were his words not to say directly that the fate of the “infidels” is hell.
With blue eyes, a bushy beard and a calm demeanor, he never allowed this journalist to take a picture of him and his excuse was always the same: “the day you are my brother and you convert to Islam, then we will take pictures.” .” The Taliban have lost one of the religious who have done the most to keep their message alive among the faithful during the two decades of international forces’ presence in the country.
The type of operation follows the pattern used by IS, which has multiplied its Friday operations against the Taliban and against mosques belonging to the Hazara minority belonging to the Shia sect of Islam over the past year. The Taliban insist that security is one of their greatest achievements since regaining power in Kabul, but the Islamic State is responding with the same tactics they have used for two decades to sow instability.
Source: La Verdad
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