Kabul school blast targets girls, 40 dead

Kabul: Multiple blasts at a school in the Afghan capital Kabul on Saturday killed at least 40 people and wounded dozens more, mostly female students, officialssaid, in an attack Afghan President Ashraf Ghani blamed on the insurgent Taliban group.

Kabul, May 8: A blast outside a school in the Afghan capital on Saturday killed at least 25 people and wounded another 52 including students, the interior ministry said.

Residents were out for shopping ahead of Eid-al-Fitr next week that marks the end of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting, when the blast took place.

“Fifty-five wounded people have been taken to hospitals,” interior ministry spokesman Tariq Arian told reporters.

Arian’s deputy Hamid Roshan said that an investigation had begun into what he said was a “terrorist attack”, adding that casualties included students.

Health ministry spokesman Dastagir Nazari said several ambulances had been rushed to the site and were evacuating the wounded.

“People in the area are angry and have beaten a number of ambulance workers,” he told reporters.

The blast comes as the US military continues to pull out its last remaining 2,500 troops from the country, despite faltering peace efforts between the Taliban and Afghan government to end a decadeslong war in Afghanistan.

The Dasht-e-Barchi neighbourhood is populated largely by the Shiite Hazaras and is often a target for Sunni Islamist militants.

In May last year a group of gunmen attacked a hospital in the area in a brazen daylight raid that left 25 people killed, including 16 mothers of new-born babies.

No group claimed that attack, but Afghan President Ashraf Ghani blamed the Taliban and the Islamic State group.

On October 24, a suicide bomber blew himself up at a tuition centre in the same district killing 18 people including students in an attack that also went unclaimed.