Islamic State has claimed responsibility for a deadly explosion that struck a Shia mosque in the Kuwaiti capital after Friday prayers.
A posting on a Twitter account known to belong to Isis said the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt. The attack was claimed by an Isis affiliate calling itself the Najd Province, the same group that claimed a pair of bombing attacks on Shia mosques in Saudi Arabia in recent weeks.
Friday’s explosion struck the Imam Sadiq mosque in the neighbourhood of al-Sawabir, a residential and shopping district of Kuwait City. Kuwait’s interior ministry said at least 25 people had died and more than 200 people were injured.
Police formed a cordon around the mosque’s complex immediately after the explosion, banning people from entering or gathering near the area. Ambulances could be seen ferrying the wounded from the site.
“We couldn’t see anything, so we went straight to the wounded and tried to carry them out. We left the dead,” said a witness, Hassan al-Haddad, 21, who said he saw several bodies.
Abdullah al-Saffar, who was at the mosque, said the explosion took place just after midday Friday prayers, which are typically the most crowded of the week. Attendance also increases during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, which started last week.
Another witness, Ahmad al-Shawaf, said worshippers were standing shoulder to shoulder in group prayer when the explosion happened near the door of the mosque. Al-Shawaf said the blast occurred near the end of a second prayer that is traditional to Shia muslims and which follows the main midday Friday prayer.
He reported that witnesses standing behind him said they saw a man walk in, stand in the back with other congregants and detonate his device.
Mohammed al-Faili, 32, said his 70-year-old father was killed in the explosion and two of his brothers were also wounded. Speaking to AP by telephone, he said he was not at the mosque at the time of the explosion but was heading to the morgue to identify his father’s body.
Isis regards Shia Muslims as heretics, and refers to them derogatively as “rafideen” or “rejectionists”. The Isis statement on Twitter said the bomber had targeted a “temple of the apostates”.
The Kuwaiti justice, religious endowment and Islamic affairs minister, Yacoub al-Sanna, described the attack as a “terrorist and cowardly action which threatens our nation and works at tearing apart the national unity”.
Al-Sanna told the official state agency Kuna that the government would take all necessary measures to ensure protection of houses of worship. “Kuwait was, and will remain, the oasis of security and safety to all components of the Kuwaiti society and sects,” he said.
