DOZENS KILLED AFTER SUICIDE BOMBER HITS WEST KABUL SCHOOL
Officials say suspected ISIS attack targeted educational centre as health ministry expects death toll to rise
A suicide bombing yesterday killed at least 48 people, many of them students, and left dozens more injured at a school in Kabul.
Officials said the bomber, thought to be a member of ISIS, detonated his device in the private Mawoud education centre in the Dasht-e-Barchi area of the Afghan capital – a largely Shiite Hazara area.
At least 15 ambulances attended the scene and trauma hospitals were overwhelmed by the influx of students needing emergency care.
A spokesman for Afghanistan’s interior ministry said the death toll was likely to climb. The health ministry said at least 67 people were hurt in the attack – casualties were mainly students under the age of 18.
Afghan security forces responded to the blast with gunfire, assuming there were more attackers, witnesses said.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani denounced the attack and ordered the authorities to investigate. He said that in “this terrorist bombing, once again, the terrorists martyred and wounded the innocent”.
He said that “by targeting educational and cultural centres, terrorists have clearly shown they are against all those Islamic principles [that strive] for men and women to learn and study”.
The Taliban denied responsibility and condemned the attack, yet the explosion came after the group’s days-long offensive on the town of Ghazni, 150 kilometres from Kabul, as well as assaults on at least two military facilities.
Jawad Ghawari, a member of the city’s Shiite clerical council, blamed ISIS for the attack, which bore the hallmarks of previous assaults on Shiite mosques, schools, and cultural centres. Mr Ghawari said that in the past two years, there had been at least 13 attacks on his community in Kabul alone. Last year, in a similar strike, a suicide bomber detonated an explosive device at a cultural centre also hosting students.
On Tuesday night, two Afghan military outposts were attacked, in which at least 46 security officials were killed. The night before, 17 Afghan security force members were killed when the Taliban overran a military camp in the north-west of the country.
Meanwhile, residents’ lives in the besieged city of Ghazni were starting to return to normal after a co-ordinated assault by the Taliban was repulsed by the Afghan National Army, with assistance from US and Nato air strikes.