Blasts in a mosque in eastern Afghanistan during Friday prayers killed at least 69 men who had gathered for worship, local officials said.
Attaullah Khogyani, spokesman for Nangarhar province's governor, said there were multiple blasts from explosives placed inside the mosque in the Jawdara area of Haska Mena district.
The roof of the mosque had completely fallen in.
Sohrab Qaderi, a member of the provincial council in Nangarhar, while expecting a rise in the number of casualties, said that more than 100 others had been wounded.
Malik Mohammadi Gul Shinwari, a tribal elder from the area, said that the mosque had completely collapsed.
“It was a heartbreaking scene I witnessed with my eyes,” Shinwari said, adding that 32 bodies and scores of injured have been transported from the blast site.
Tezab Khan, a member of the local police who was on duty in the area, said: “I could hear the Mullah who was preaching and suddenly his voice was silenced with a boom. When I arrived on the scene, people were trying to bring out the bodies and injured who were stuck under the fallen roof.”
The Jawdara area is controlled by the Afghan security forces.
No militant group has claimed responsibility for the blasts so far. The Taliban and the militant Islamic State (IS) group fighters are actively operating in parts of Nangarhar that share a border with Pakistan in the east.
A United Nations report on civilian casualties recorded 4,313 civilians killed and wounded in the past three months.
Pakistan condemns bombing
Pakistan "strongly" condemned the bomb blasts in the mosque in Nangarhar, terming them a "mindless act of terrorism".
"We share the grief of the bereaved families and offer our deepest sympathies and condolences over their loss in this mindless act of terrorism," the Foreign Office said in a statement.
"Pakistan condemns terrorism in all its forms and manifestations and stands in solidarity with the government and people of Afghanistan in their fight against terrorism," the press release added.
The figures - 1,174 deaths and 3,139 wounded from July 1 until September 30 this year - represent a 42 percent increase over the same period last year. More than 40 percent of the casualties were women and children.
The UN laid the blame mainly at the feet of "anti-government elements" such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) armed group and the Taliban, which was removed from power during a US-led invasion in 2001, though it said it also documented an alarming rise in casualties caused by pro-government forces.
Both ISIL and the Taliban are active in Nangarhar province, with Afghan security forces struggling to battle both groups after the United States and NATO officially concluded their combat mission in the country four years ago.
Efforts to end Afghanistan's 18-year-war have been stepped up recently, with US peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad visiting Pakistan earlier this month to meet with the Taliban's top negotiator, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.
US officials said Khalilzad was in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, to follow up on talks he held in September in New York with Pakistani officials, including Prime Minister Imran Khan.
They insisted Khalilzad was not in Pakistan to restart US-Taliban peace talks, however.
The meeting was the first that Khalilzad has held with the Taliban since last month, when US President Donald Trump declared that the peace talks, which have largely been held in Qatar, were "dead".
He blamed an uptick in violence by the Taliban that included the killing of a US soldier for the breakdown in negotiations.
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