20 people were killed and 90 injured in a powerful truck suicide bomb that went off near a hospital in southern Afghanistan.
The Taliban, who claimed responsibility for the bombing, has carried out nearly daily attacks since peace talks with the United States collapsed earlier this month.
The explosion, besides destroying part of a hospital in Qalat, battered several ambulances parked close by. Casualties are expected to rise as rescue workers are removing the rubble.
Residents, many of whom had come to see their sick family members, used shawls and blankets to carry the wounded inside the destroyed building, while authorities scrambled to take the worst of the wounded to hospitals in nearby Kandahar.
“The bomb was huge and it was carried by a mini-truck,” said a senior defence ministry official in the capital, Kabul.
Morning prayers had just finished when worshippers were stunned by the ear-splitting blast that destroyed parts of a mosque adjacent to the hospital building, said Mahboob Hakimi, a resident of Qalat.
The Taliban has warned that they will step up their campaign against the Afghan government and foreign forces to dissuade people from voting in the upcoming elections on September 28.
A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahed, said in a tweet said a nearby intelligence office, that was the target, was destroyed and "tens of intelligence operatives killed/wounded." Haqbayan said the wall of the National Security Department (NDS) building was damaged.”
The provincial governor, Rahmatullah Yarmal, said many of the dead and wounded were women and children. President Ashraf Ghani's spokesman, Sediq Sediqqi, condemned the attack in Zabul, tweeting that the Taliban "continue to target civilians while their leaders travel to Iran and Russia," a reference to the Taliban negotiators recent forays seeking support abroad.
More than 70,000 security forces have been assigned across Afghanistan on protection duty to safeguard more than 9 million people who are expected to come out and vote on September 28.
Suhail Shaheen, the Taliban's spokesman for their political office in the Middle Eastern state of Qatar, said in a tweet that a cease-fire had been part of a US-Taliban deal before President Trump declared it "dead." He did not elaborate and earlier defended Taliban attacks before an agreement signing, saying both sides in the conflict had carried out attacks.