(Kabul) At least 19 people were killed on Friday in Kabul in a suicide attack, which struck mostly girls, against a training center full of students located in a neighborhood home to the minority Hazara community.
Posted at 6:25 a.m.
“Students were preparing for an exam when a suicide bomber blew himself up,” said Khalid Zadran, Afghan police spokesman. According to the same source, 19 people died and 27 others were injured.
“Most of the victims are girls,” testified to AFP a student on the spot at the time of the explosion, without being able to specify whether these victims had been killed or injured.
About 600 people, he said, were in the class of this training center which prepares students, aged 18 and over, for university exams.
The NGO Emergency, which received 22 victims in its hospital, including 20 women, indicated that they were between 18 and 25 years old.
“Few of the boys were hit as they were at the back of the classroom and the suicide bomber entered through the front door where the girls were sitting,” said fellow student Ali Irfani.
This survivor said he first heard gunshots. The suicide bomber shot dead two guards before entering the classroom, he said.
“There was a loud explosion and then chaos, many students, boys and girls, tried to escape from the building,” a trader, requesting anonymity, told AFP. “It was a horrible scene. Everyone was so scared”.
“Many students received shrapnel in the head, neck and eyes,” also said a resident of the neighborhood, Asadullah Jahangir, who helped transport the victims to hospitals.
The roof of the classroom collapsed completely, the doors and windows were shattered by the blast, AFP noted. At midday, municipal employees were trying to clean the floor covered in bloodstains.
This attack, which once again targets the world of education, took place in the district of Dasht-e-Barchi, in the west of Kabul, a predominantly Shiite Muslim area where the minority Hazara community lives, the scene of some of the deadliest attacks in Afghanistan.
Education is an extremely sensitive issue in this predominantly Sunni country, with the Taliban preventing many girls from returning to secondary education (middle and high school). On the other hand, female students are admitted to university, but their number should decrease over the years, for lack of having been to college and high school.
The Islamic State (IS), another Sunni group with which the Taliban nevertheless harbors deep enmity and ideological differences, also opposes girls’ education. IS, the main threat of the Taliban regime, has claimed responsibility for several attacks in recent months. That of Friday was not claimed.
In the morning, families flocked to the various hospitals in tears, looking for their loved ones. Lists of people who died or were injured were hung at the entrance to the establishments.
“Heinous act”
“We didn’t find her here,” worried a young woman looking for her 19-year-old sister in one. “We call her, but she doesn’t answer,” she despaired.
“Attacking civilian targets proves the enemy’s inhuman cruelty and lack of moral standards,” Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul Nafy Takor said.
On April 20, at least six people were killed and 24 injured in two explosions that hit a school for boys in the same district in the west of the capital.
Dasht-e-Barchi has been heavily hit in recent years and since the Taliban returned to power in August 2021. Several attacks have been claimed by ISIS, the regional branch of the jihadist group Islamic State, which views the Hazaras as heretics.
In May 2021, a series of explosions also occurred in front of a school for girls in the same district, killing 85 people, mostly high school girls, and injuring more than 300.
IS, which had already claimed responsibility for an attack in October 2020 against a training center (24 dead) in the same area, is strongly suspected of having carried out this attack.
The Taliban are also accused of attacking the Hazaras as during their first governance (1996 to 2001). Their return to power ended 20 years of war and led to a significant reduction in violence, but security has begun to deteriorate in recent months.
In a tweet, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) on Friday condemned a “heinous act” and stressed that “security is deteriorating in Afghanistan”.
The attack is “a shameful reminder of the Taliban’s inability and total failure” to protect the Afghan population, the NGO Amnesty International said indignantly.