(KABUL, Afghanistan) — A suicide bomber targeted a gathering of hundreds of Islamic scholars in the Afghan capital on Tuesday, killing at least 50 people as Muslims around the world marked the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad.

Public Health Ministry spokesman Wahid Majroh said another 83 people were wounded in the attack, with 20 of them in critical condition and the toll likely to rise.

The suicide bomber was able to sneak into a wedding hall in Kabul where hundreds of Muslim religious scholars and clerics had gathered to mark the holiday. No one immediately claimed the attack, but both the Taliban and a local Islamic State affiliate have targeted religious scholars aligned with the government in the past.

“The victims of the attack unfortunately are all religious scholars who gathered to commemorate the birthday of Prophet Muhammad,” said Basir Mujahid, spokesman for the Kabul police chief. He said police had not been asked to provide security for the event, and that the bomber ha..

A dead sperm whale that washed ashore in eastern Indonesia had nearly 6 kilograms (about 13 pounds) of plastic waste in its stomach, park officials say.

The 31-foot whale was found late on Monday in Wakatobi National Park in Sulawesi province. It had ingested 115 plastic cups, four plastic bottles, 25 plastic bags, a nylon sack, two flip-flops and more than 1,000 other assorted pieces of plastic, park chief Heri Santoso told the Associated Press.

Rescuers in Indonesia were alerted to the scene late Monday after learning from local environmentalists that villagers had surrounded the dead whale and were beginning to butcher the rotting carcass, Santoso said.

“Although we have not been able to deduce the cause of death, the facts that we see are truly awful,” said Dwi Suprapti, a marine species conservation coordinator at WWF Indonesia.

She said that the animal’s advanced state of decay made it hard to determine whether the plastic had caused the whale’s death.

In June, a pilot whal..