(Image Source: CNN)

BY LAUREN ZIMA

ANCHOR LAUREN GORES

A suicide bomber attacks a Shiite shrine in the Afghan capital of Kabul, killing more than 50 people and wounding more than 150. The death toll expected to rise.

In what the media is calling a rare attack, a man wearing a backpack filled with explosives bombed a Shiite shrine in the center of Kabul on the holy day of Ashura -- where hundreds of Afghans had gathered. Afghan President Hamid Karzai said this is the first time a terrorist attack has taken place on, quote, “such an important religious day in Afghanistan.”

NPR explains the religious significance of Ashura.

“The Shiite holiday of Ashura commemorates the death of the prophet Muhammad’s grandson. It also marks the divide between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. The Taliban and Al Qaeda are Sunni and consider Shiites to be heretics, but Afghanistan had been largely spared from sectarian violence in the past decade, and Shiites had felt increasingly confident to mark their holidays publicly.”

But, a Taliban spokesperson condemned the attacks, saying the group was not responsible. Now, NBC is reporting a Pakistani militant group may have carried out the bombing.

“Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al-Alami … has claimed responsibility for the Kabul suicide attack. In a call to NBC News, someone who claimed to be a spokesman for the group said they had succeeded in their mission to attack Shiites. ‘It is the first time that someone outside of Afghanistan has claimed responsibility for an attack in the country,’ NBC News' Mushtaq Yusufzai said.”

A reporter for the BBC describes the devastation, and emphasizes just how rare this kind of attack is.

“There are pools of blood. There was a crowd of many hundreds when the suicide attacker detonated his vest. Women and children among the dead. There’s long been sectarian tensions here in Afghanistan between Sunnis and Shiites, but this kind of sectarian violence -- on this scale -- is almost unprecedented.”

Another blast simultaneously struck a Shia mosque in a northern city of Afghanistan, killing four. The U.S. has condemned the attacks.