(Kabul) At least six people were killed and 24 injured in two explosions that hit a school for boys on Tuesday in a district of Kabul largely populated by members of the Shiite Hazara minority and already targeted several times in the past.
Posted at 7:29
Updated at 9:06 a.m.
Two homemade bombs exploded outside the Abdul Rahim Shahid school, located in the district of Dasht-e-Barchi, in the west of the capital, killing six according to a “preliminary” report, told AFP Kabul police spokesman Khalid Zadran.
Two hospitals in Kabul reported receiving 24 injured.
Horrifying images circulating on social media showed several bodies lying on the ground at the entrance to the compound, amid pools of blood, charred books and scattered school bags.
“We had just left the school and went out the back door when the explosion took place,” Ali Jan, a student injured in the first blast, told AFP in a hospital in Dasht-e-Barchi. .
The second explosion occurred as first responders arrived to assist the victims.
“When I heard the explosion, I called a friend of mine who studies at this school,” said Murtaza, a trader injured in the second explosion. “His phone was off. So I went to the scene […] and it was then that I was touched”.
Dasht-e-Barchi is home to many members of the Hazara minority, marginalized for centuries and regularly persecuted in this predominantly Sunni country. The neighborhood has often been targeted in the past by the Islamic State (IS) group.
Saeed Rahmatullah Haidari, a student, described “terrifying” scenes. “Some of our friends had lost their hands, others were covered in blood.”
“There were pieces of broken glass, pools of blood […] My whole body was shaking,” he said.
Outside Dasht-e-Barchi hospital, Taliban soldiers brutally repelled relatives of victims gathered there, an AFP journalist noted.
A woman fainted after learning her son had been injured. An elderly lady was in tears waiting to hear the fate of a loved one.
Heretics
A third explosion was heard in an English-language training center in the same neighborhood, added Mr. Zadran, explaining that it was a grenade that injured one person.
Security has greatly improved in Afghanistan since the Taliban took power in August and the withdrawal of American troops, after 20 years of attrition against their military presence.
Attacks, mainly claimed by the Islamic State-Khorasan (EI-K), the regional branch of the IS, however, still occur regularly.
Dasht-e-Barchi has been hit in recent years and since the Taliban’s return to power by several attacks claimed by EI-K, which considers the Hazaras heretics.
In May 2021, a series of explosions occurred in front of a school for girls in this district, killing 85 people, mostly high school girls, and injuring more than 300.
First a car bomb exploded in front of the school, then two more bombs followed as students rushed outside. IS, which claimed responsibility for an attack in October 2020 against an educational center (24 dead) in the same area, is strongly suspected of having carried out this attack.
In this same neighborhood, in May 2020, a group of armed men attacked a maternity hospital supported by Médecins sans Frontières, killing 25 people, including 16 mothers, some of whom were about to give birth. This attack had not been claimed, but the United States had accused the IS of being responsible for it.
Smaller attacks, claimed by ISIS, still took place in Dasht-e-Barchi in November and December 2021.
The Taliban themselves have often attacked Afghan Shiites in the past, members of the Hazara community, which represents between 10 and 20% of the Afghan population (about 40 million inhabitants).
The Taliban are trying to downplay the threat of ISIS and are waging a ruthless fight against the group, which they have been fighting for years. They multiplied raids, particularly in the eastern province of Nangharar, and arrested hundreds of men accused of being part of it.
They now claim to have defeated EI-K, but analysts believe that the extremist group is still the main security challenge for the new Afghan power.