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Local residents also said that it was well known in the area that the religious group in charge of the mosque was holding religious lectures in the targeted building every Thursday between sunset prayer and evening prayer, around the time of the attack. Any attempt to gather pattern of life information about the targeted building from people with local knowledge might also have alerted US authorities to this fact.

Human Rights Watch interviewed by phone 14 people with first-hand knowledge of the attack, including four who were in the mosque at the time of the attack; eight local residents, first responders, and local journalists who arrived at the site shortly after the attack; and two medical personnel who treated people injured in the attack. In carrying out the investigation, Human Rights Watch used some of the research provided by the open source investigative group Bellingcat which analyzed video footage and photographs from the attack, and Forensic Architecture which created models of the mosque and a reconstruction of the attack. However, Human Rights Watch, Bellingcat, and Forensic Architecture conducted separate investigations into the attack.

The people who were in the mosque said that a religious lecture in the service section of the mosque, held every Thursday, had just finished so people were spreading out in the mosque, getting ready for night prayer, when the attack happened. The first wave of attacks struck the service section of the mosque, completely reducing it to rubble. One mosque employee who was in the service section said:

My lower half was buried under the rubble. I couldn’t move my head. Someone’s legs were beneath me. Half an hour later we started hearing a faint voice, people were calling out, so we shouted back. The civil defense started digging us out, using only their hands. Two hours later they got to us through a hole. There was rubble as high as four meters above us. They stayed there working till the following morning, trying to rescue as many people as possible. I had wounds all over.

A second wave of attacks killed and injured people who were trying to flee.