SHARAN, Afghanistan, May 4 (Xinhua) -- Twenty civilians were wounded in a hand grenade explosion outside a local mosque in Afghanistan's eastern Paktika province overnight, local police said Monday.
"The incident occurred when Ramadan night prayers were underway in a mosque in Mohammad Hassan village, Khair Kot district roughly at 08:00 p.m. local time Sunday," provincial police spokesman Shah Mahmoud Arian told Xinhua.
The wounded were shifted to a district hospital and none of them suffered life-threatening wounds, the police official added.
The Taliban militants were blamed for the attack, but they denied their involvement in the incident.
More than 500 civilians were killed and 760 others wounded due to the fighting in Afghanistan in the first three months of 2020, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) announced late April.
The UNAMA attributed 55 percent of civilian casualties to the Taliban and other insurgent groups, 32 percent to security forces over the period while the rest were caused by other reasons.
The UNAMA urged the government and anti-government elements to do more to protect civilians from harm, especially in view of the looming threat posed to all Afghans by the COVID-19 pandemic. Enditem
