(Kabul) The suicide attack committed Friday in a training center for students in Kabul killed at least 43 people, according to a new report released Monday by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Manua).
Posted at 12:36 a.m.
“Forty-three dead. 83 injured. Young women and girls are the main victims,” tweeted the mission, which expects to see the number of victims increase.
Friday, a suicide attack was perpetrated in a training center preparing for university exams, located in a district of the capital sheltering the Shiite Hazara minority.
The girls were the main victims of the attack which has not yet been claimed.
According to the Taliban authorities, the toll is 25 people dead and 33 injured in this attack.
On Friday, sporadic demonstrations, led by women, took place in Kabul and other cities to denounce the attack. These initiatives were immediately suppressed by the Taliban forces who fired into the air several times to disperse them.
Girls’ education is an extremely sensitive issue in Afghanistan, a country with a Sunni majority. The Taliban banned secondary education (middle and high school) for girls. Female students, on the other hand, are admitted to university, but their number should decrease over the years, for lack of having been to college and high school.
The Taliban also consider the Hazara community to be pagans, and human rights groups have often accused them of targeting them.
The regional branch of the Islamic State jihadist group, EI-K, which in the past has also claimed responsibility for several attacks against the Hazaras, considers them heretics and also opposes the education of girls.