Photo Credit: Photo by JAWAD JALALI/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock (10208383a)

A huge explosion has ripped through a mosque in the Afghan capital Kabul, police say.

Italian non-government organization, Emergency, which operates a hospital in Kabul, said it had received 27 patients wounded in the blast, three of whom had died.

Khalid Zadran, the Taliban’s Kabul police spokesman, was quoted by local media as saying there had been an explosion in the city’s north-west.

Reports say the Siddiqi mosque’s imam was among the dead.

It is unclear who was behind the attack, which comes the week after a prominent pro-Taliban cleric was killed in a suicide bomb blast, also in Kabul. The Islamic State (IS) group claimed responsibility for the earlier attack.

Security forces have arrived at the scene, in a northern Kabul neighbourhood, the spokesman added.

Despite the Taliban’s assertion that they have brought security to the nation, Afghanistan is witnessing regular attacks by armed groups, many of them claimed by an ISIL affiliate known as the Islamic State in Khorasan Province, ISKP (ISIS-K), in recent months.