IS claims responsibility for suicide attack on Shia students

KABUL : As Afghanistan’s Shia mourned their dead and held funeral services on Thursday, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the horrific suicide bombing the previous day in Kabul that targeted a Shiite neighbourhood, killing 34 students.

The bomber, who had walked into a classroom in a one-room building at a Shia educational centre in the neighbourhood of Dasht-e-barchi, where he set off his explosives, was identified as “the martyrdom-seeking brother Abdul Raouf al-khorasani.”

Afghanistan’s IS affiliate is known as The Islamic State in Khorasan Province, the ancient name of an area that encompassed parts of present-day Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia.

The bombing also wounded 57 students, according to Health Ministry spokesman Wahid Majroh. Earlier on Thursday, the ministry revised an earlier death toll from the attack down to 34, not 48.

Most of the victims were young men and women, high school graduates preparing for university entrance exams in the Shiite area’s educational center. Authorities launched an investigation to determine how the bomber had managed to sneak into the compound in the neighbourhood, which has its own guards.

The Dasht-e-barchi area is populated by members of Afghanistan’s minority ethnic Hazaras — a Shia community that has in the past been targeted by similar large-scale attacks.