A huge bomb blast on Friday at one of the biggest mosques in western Afghanistan martyred at least 18 people, including an influential cleric who earlier this year called for those who commit \u201cthe smallest act\u201d against the government to be beheaded.
\nImages posted on Twitter showed what appeared to be blood-stained bodies scattered around the compound of Gazargah Mosque in Herat city.
\nViolence has largely declined since the Taliban returned to power last year, but several bomb blasts \u2014 some targeting minority communities \u2014 have rocked the country in recent months, many claimed by the militant\u00a0Daesh\u00a0group.
\nAt least 18 people were martyred and 23 wounded in Friday\u2019s blast, said Hameedullah Motawakel, spokesman for the governor of Herat province, in a text message to media.
\nGovernment spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid confirmed Mujib ur Rahman Ansari, the imam of the mosque, was among the dead.
\n\u201cA strong and courageous religious scholar of this country was martyred in a brutal attack,\u201d he said on Twitter.
\nAnsari was an influential cleric known for his fiery speeches. In July, during a religious gathering in Kabul, he strongly defended Afghanistan\u2019s new Taliban rulers.
\n\u201cWhoever commits the smallest act against our Islamic government should be beheaded,\u201d he had said.
\n\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A huge bomb blast on Friday at one of the biggest mosques in western Afghanistan martyred at least 18 people, including an influential cleric who…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":244,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}