Islamic State claims Kabul bombing that killed dozens
The Islamic State announced Thursday that one of its militants was behind a suicide bombing that killed and injured scores of students in a Shiite educational center in Kabul.
The radical Islamist group made the claim on its Amaq news agency, saying the attacker used a suicide vest in the strike Wednesday, which targeted a classroom packed with teenagers in a Shiite Muslim district of the Afghan capital.
The Afghan government Thursday revised the death toll from the attack to 34, down from its initial figure of 48. It said 57 people were wounded in the bombing, part of spate of attacks against a branch of Islam that the Islamic State considers heretical. Confusion about the death toll arose Wednesday as Kabul hospitals and government officials struggled to cope with the carnage.
Most of the bombing victims were high school graduates who were preparing for university entrance exams.
As family members and relatives were burying their slain loved ones in a mass grave on a hill overlooking Kabul, a group of armed men launched an attack on a training facility used by the country’s intelligence agency in a different part of the city.
According to Kabul police, the assailants used a nearby house under construction to stage the attack, which sparked exchanges of gunfire lasting several hours, followed by explosions.
There were no immediate reports of casualties on the government side from the latest strike. It followed a series of major Taliban raids in various parts of the country that have claimed the lives of at least 200 security forces in less than a week.
The spiraling violence has further damaged the credibility of the U.S.-backed Afghan government and raised questions about the Trump administration’s war strategy in the country.
Amnesty International on Thursday denounced the massacre of students in Kabul as a “war crime” that was apparently “motivated by sectarian hatred.”
In a statement, Amnesty’s South Asia campaigner, Samira Hamidi, added: “The mounting civilian casualties show beyond any doubt that Afghanistan and, in particular, its capital Kabul, are not safe. Violence across the country over the first six months of 2018 has been at record levels. And yet people fleeing the conflict, making desperate journeys to neighboring countries and to Europe, are being turned away in the thousands.”
The rights group noted that according to United Nations figures released last month, 1,692 people were killed in the first six months of 2018 — more than during any comparable time period in a decade.
Among those injured in Wednesday’s attack was Sima Ahmadi, 17, who was sitting at the front of the classroom and sustained wounds to her arms and legs, The Associated Press reported. Sitting at her bedside, her mother, Anifa Ahmadi, said she had warned against attending school.
“Don’t go to school. We are under attack everywhere. No place is safe for us,” the mother said she had repeatedly told her daughter. “But she said, ‘No, no, no.’”
Undeterred, Sima vowed to pursue her education, the AP reported. “I won’t let anyone stop me,” she said. “I will resist all terrorist attacks to have the future I want.”