Terrorists kill 40 in Kabul

KABUL, Afghanistan — A series of bomb blasts targeted a Shiite Muslim cultural center and news agency in the Afghan capital on Thursday, killing at least 41 people and wounding dozens in an attack that underscored the threats facing the country’s journalists and religious minorities.

Three explosions struck a compound that houses Tebyan, a cultural center with links to Shiitedominated Iran, during a commemoration of the December 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, officials said.

Witnesses and journalists said that dozens of students and other visitors had gathered at the cultural center in Dasht-e Barchi, a western Kabul neighborhood with a large Shiite population. The majority of Afghan Muslims are Sunnis.

The attack began when a suicide bomber walked into the building shortly after 10 a.m. and detonated a vest packed with explosives. That was followed by two more explosions caused by "sticky bombs" that had been planted on the walls of the compound, according to Afghan interior ministry officials.

The attack also injured 84 people, according to the public health ministry. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it targeted the center because it "sends students to Iran to learn from the ayatollahs," according to the group’s Amaq news agency.

Zia Rezayee, a 22-year-old university student who lives near the Tebyan compound, said he heard the blast as he was walking and rushed to the scene.

“Everyone was dead or injured,” he said. “There was no one in sight who hadn’t been wounded.”

He said he was helping move a wounded person into an ambulance when he heard the second and third blasts.

“Then we all, including the security forces, fled the area,” Rezayee said. “It was a nightmare. People were lying everywhere.”

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani called the attack “an inhuman act that is against all Islamic and human principles.”

The White House also condemned the attack, with press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders calling it a “barbaric attack.”

The suicide bomber struck on the ground floor of the building, which houses the Tebyan cultural center. The second and third floors are home to the Afghan Voice news agency and Ensaf, a daily newspaper.

Tebyan is one of several cultural and media organizations in Afghanistan that are sponsored by Iran, which has sought to project its influence in the neighboring country. Iran has also recruited Afghan Shiites to fight Islamic State militants in Syria as part of militias loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad.