Islamic State claims fatal attack on Shiite students
KABUL — As Afghanistan’s Shiites mourned their dead and held funeral services Thursday, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the horrific suicide bombing in Kabul that targeted a Shiite neighborhood the previous day, killing 34 students.
Grieving families gathered to bury their dead but even amid the somber atmosphere there was no respite from violence, underscoring the near-daily, persistent threats in the warbattered country.
Two gunmen besieged a compound belonging to the Afghan intelligence service in a northwestern Kabul neighborhood Thursday, opening fire as Afghan security forces moved in to cut them off. The standoff lasted for nearly six hours before police killed the gunmen and secured the area. The Islamic State, in a posting on its Aamaq News Agency, claimed more than 200 people were killed or wounded in Wednesday’s suicide bombing.
The bomber, who had walked into a classroom in a one-room building at a Shiite educational center in the neighborhood of Dasht-e-Barchi, where he set off his explosives, was identified as “the martyrdom-seeking brother Abdul Raouf al-Khorasani.” Afghanistan’s Islamic State affiliate is known as The Islamic State in Khorasan Province, after an ancient name of the area that encompassed parts of presentday 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.
Kabul hospitals were completely overwhelmed in the immediate aftermath of the attack as officials collected data on the casualties, leading to the confusion and the initial wrong toll.
Islamic State, which considers Shiites to be heretics, frequently targets them, attacking their mosques, schools and cultural centers. In the past two years, there have been at least 13 attacks on the Shiite community in Kabul alone.