BEIRUT (Dispatches) – Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement’s secretary general has condemned the Daesh-claimed deadly terrorist attack against a Shia mosque in the northeastern Afghan city of Kunduz, saying the terrorist outfit aims to stoke tensions and plunge Afghanistan into a civil war.
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah made the remarks in a televised speech on Monday, days after a deadly bomb attack on Afghan worshipers offering Friday prayers at the mosque in the Khanabad Bandar area in Kunduz killed scores of people.
More than 150 people were killed in the attack at Gozar-e-Sayed Abad Mosque in the Khanabad area of Kunduz, with a predominantly Hazara population.
The Hezbollah leader denounced the bombing attack on the Shia mosque in Kunduz, stressing that “the Wahhabi terrorist organization” committed the crime and the United States “bears responsibility” for supporting the act of terror.
“The U.S. administration and the CIA, and all those, who are involved in supporting Daesh, are responsible for the blood that has been spilled,” Nasrallah said.
Nasrallah said, “Daesh’s job today is to create a state of internal tension that leads to civil war in Afghanistan,” adding that “the responsibility of the current authorities in Afghanistan is to protect citizens regardless of their religion or sect.”
Separately, Hezbollah’s leader accused the judge leading the Beirut port explosion investigation of being biased and politicized. He told victims of the deadly blast “you won’t get the truth”.
Nasrallah said Judge Tarek Bitar was using “the blood of the victims to serve political interests”. He previously accused Bitar of “playing politics” on the anniversary of the blast in August.
“I say to the families of the victims, ‘if you think that this judge will get you to the truth – he won’t’,” Nasrallah said in the televised address. “We want an honest and transparent judge.”
Nasrallah called for Lebanon’s Higher Judicial Council, the country’s highest judicial authority, to convene. It can hold a vote to remove Bitar not just from the case, but from the right to work as a judge.
“Going after specific agencies, specific ministers, and a specific prime minister is clearly political targeting,” Nasrallah said, questioning why Bitar had not reached out to other former ministers who served terms during the six years the explosive material was unsafely stored at the Port of Beirut.
More than 200 people were killed in the Beirut blast on August 4, 2020, after a huge stockpile of ammonium nitrate, which had been stored unsafely at the port for years, detonated. The blast was one of the largest non-nuclear explosions ever recorded, and the most destructive single incident in Lebanon’s troubled history.
About 6,500 people were injured and entire neighborhoods in the country’s capital were destroyed.