KABUL (Reuters) – The death toll from a suicide bombing in a classroom in Kabul has risen to 35, the UN said on Saturday, as Shiite Hazara women who bore the brunt of the attack organized a demonstration of defiance against the “genocide” of their minority community.
A suicide bomber blew himself up in a Kabul study hall on Friday as hundreds of students sat for college entrance exam preparation tests in the city’s Dasht-e-Barchi district.
The West Quarter is a predominantly Shia Muslim enclave and home to the minority Hazara community – a historically oppressed group that has been the target of some of Afghanistan’s most brutal attacks in recent years.
“The latest casualty figures from the attack put at least 35 dead, with an additional 82 injured,” the official said. United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said in a statement.
More than 20 of those killed were girls and women, he added.
The number of victims of the UN mission is higher than the toll announced by the Kabul authorities.
An Interior Ministry official told AFP on condition of anonymity on Saturday that 25 people were killed and 33 injured in the attack on the Kaaj Center for Higher Education — update of an earlier toll of 20 killed and 27 injured.
Since their return to power last August, security has been a sensitive subject for the Taliban and extremists have often insisted on minimizing attacks implicating their regime.
Meanwhile, on Saturday, dozens of Hazara women defied a Taliban ban on gatherings to protest the latest bloodshed in their community.
About 50 women chanted “Stop the Hazara genocide, it’s not a crime to be Shia”, as they marched past a hospital in Dasht-e-Barchi where several victims of the attack were being treated.
Dressed in hijabs and black headscarves, the demonstrators carried banners that read: “Stop killing the Hazaras”, an AFP correspondent reported.
Witnesses told AFP that the suicide bomber detonated in the women’s section of the single-sex study room.
Wajiha, a survivor, saw her friends and students struggling to escape the room after the attack.
“I saw boys climbing the wall of the compound and shooting girls. I saw a boy who was injured himself but he kept shooting girls,” Wajiha told AFP. Saturday.
Protester Farzana Ahmadi said the attack was “against Hazaras and Hazara girls”.
“We demand an end to this genocide. We organized the demonstration to claim our rights,” she told AFP.
– Regular target – Protesters then gathered outside the hospital and chanted slogans as dozens of heavily armed Taliban, some carrying rocket launchers, stood guard.
“The Taliban are urged to protect the rights of all Afghans and to stop using weapons to prevent the right to peaceful protest,” the UN mission said on Twitter after the protest.
Since the return to power of the hardline Taliban, women’s protests have become risky, with many demonstrators detained and gatherings dispersed by Taliban forces firing gunfire into the air.
No group claimed responsibility for Friday’s attack.
But the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group views Shiites as heretics and has previously claimed responsibility for attacks in the region targeting girls, schools and mosques.
The Taliban have also been accused by rights groups of targeting Hazaras during their 20-year insurgency against the former US-backed government.
Amnesty International said Friday’s attack was “a shameful reminder of the Taliban’s inability and utter failure as the de facto authorities to protect the Afghan people”.
Since returning to power, the Taliban has pledged to protect minorities and suppress security threats.
“We promise all our compatriots that we will do more to bring the perpetrators of yesterday’s attacks and others like them to justice,” the Foreign Office said on Saturday after Friday’s attack drew widespread international condemnation. .
In May last year, before the Taliban returned to power, at least 85 people – mostly girls – were killed and around 300 injured when three bombs exploded near their school in Dasht-e-Barchi.
Again, no group claimed responsibility, but a year earlier IS had claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on an education center in the same area that left 24 people dead.
A suicide bomber blew himself up in a Kabul study hall on Friday as hundreds of students sat for college entrance exam preparation tests in the city’s Dasht-e-Barchi district.
The West Quarter is a predominantly Shia Muslim enclave and home to the minority Hazara community – a historically oppressed group that has been the target of some of Afghanistan’s most brutal attacks in recent years.
“The latest casualty figures from the attack put at least 35 dead, with an additional 82 injured,” the official said. United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said in a statement.
More than 20 of those killed were girls and women, he added.
The number of victims of the UN mission is higher than the toll announced by the Kabul authorities.
An Interior Ministry official told AFP on condition of anonymity on Saturday that 25 people were killed and 33 injured in the attack on the Kaaj Center for Higher Education — update of an earlier toll of 20 killed and 27 injured.
Since their return to power last August, security has been a sensitive subject for the Taliban and extremists have often insisted on minimizing attacks implicating their regime.
Meanwhile, on Saturday, dozens of Hazara women defied a Taliban ban on gatherings to protest the latest bloodshed in their community.
About 50 women chanted “Stop the Hazara genocide, it’s not a crime to be Shia”, as they marched past a hospital in Dasht-e-Barchi where several victims of the attack were being treated.
Dressed in hijabs and black headscarves, the demonstrators carried banners that read: “Stop killing the Hazaras”, an AFP correspondent reported.
Witnesses told AFP that the suicide bomber detonated in the women’s section of the single-sex study room.
Wajiha, a survivor, saw her friends and students struggling to escape the room after the attack.
“I saw boys climbing the wall of the compound and shooting girls. I saw a boy who was injured himself but he kept shooting girls,” Wajiha told AFP. Saturday.
Protester Farzana Ahmadi said the attack was “against Hazaras and Hazara girls”.
“We demand an end to this genocide. We organized the demonstration to claim our rights,” she told AFP.
– Regular target – Protesters then gathered outside the hospital and chanted slogans as dozens of heavily armed Taliban, some carrying rocket launchers, stood guard.
“The Taliban are urged to protect the rights of all Afghans and to stop using weapons to prevent the right to peaceful protest,” the UN mission said on Twitter after the protest.
Since the return to power of the hardline Taliban, women’s protests have become risky, with many demonstrators detained and gatherings dispersed by Taliban forces firing gunfire into the air.
No group claimed responsibility for Friday’s attack.
But the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group views Shiites as heretics and has previously claimed responsibility for attacks in the region targeting girls, schools and mosques.
The Taliban have also been accused by rights groups of targeting Hazaras during their 20-year insurgency against the former US-backed government.
Amnesty International said Friday’s attack was “a shameful reminder of the Taliban’s inability and utter failure as the de facto authorities to protect the Afghan people”.
Since returning to power, the Taliban has pledged to protect minorities and suppress security threats.
“We promise all our compatriots that we will do more to bring the perpetrators of yesterday’s attacks and others like them to justice,” the Foreign Office said on Saturday after Friday’s attack drew widespread international condemnation. .
In May last year, before the Taliban returned to power, at least 85 people – mostly girls – were killed and around 300 injured when three bombs exploded near their school in Dasht-e-Barchi.
Again, no group claimed responsibility, but a year earlier IS had claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on an education center in the same area that left 24 people dead.
