Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
48 dead in blast targeting Shiite students in Kabul
KABUL, Afghanistan — A suicide bomber struck a private education center in a Shiite neighborhood of Kabul on Wednesday where high school graduates were preparing for university entrance exams, killing 48 men and women and leaving behind a scene of devastation and tragedy.
The bombing, blamed on the Islamic State group, was the latest assault on Afghanistan’s Shiite community, which has increasingly been targeted by Sunni extremists who consider Shiites to be heretics.
It also showed how militants are still able to stage large-scale attacks, even in the heart of Kabul, and underscored the struggles of the Afghan forces to provide security and stability on their own.
The attack comes amid a particularly bloody week in Afghanistan that has seen Taliban attacks kill scores of Afghan troops and civilians.
It was not clear how the bomber managed to sneak into the building, used by the Shiite community as an education center, in the Dasht-i Barcha area of Kabul.
The spokesman for the public health ministry, Wahid Majroh, said 67 people were wounded in the bombing and that the death toll — which steadily rose in the immediate aftermath of the bombing — could still rise. He did not say if all the victims were students and whether any of their teachers were also among the casualties.
Dawlat Hossain, father of 18-year-old student Fareba who had left her class just a few minutes before the bombing but was still inside the compound, was on his way to meet his daughter and started running when he heard the explosion.
Hossain recounted to The Associated Press how when he entered Fareba’s classroom, he saw parts of bodies on desks and benches.
“There was blood everywhere, all over the room, so scary and horrible,” he said. After finding out that his daughter was safe, he helped move the wounded to hospitals.
Fareba was traumatized that so many of her friends were killed, but Hossain said she was lucky to be alive.
The explosion initially set off gunfire from Afghan guards in the area, leading to assumptions there were more attackers, but officials later said all indications were that there was only one bomber.
No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but Jawad Ghawari, a member of the city’s Shiite clerical council, blamed Islamic State, which has carried similar attacks on Shiites in the past, targeting mosques, schools and cultural centers. In the past two years, there were at least 13 attacks on the Shiite community in Kabul alone, he said.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani condemned the “terrorist” attack that “martyred and wounded the innocent” — students attending class — and ordered an investigation into the attack.
“By targeting educational and cultural centers, terrorists have clearly shown they are against all those Islamic principles (that strive) for both men and women to learn and study,” Ghani said in a statement.
The head of the U.N. children’s agency denounced the attack, saying it’s “deplorable” that children continue to be hardest hit in the growing violence across Afghanistan.
“Children are not, and must never be the target of violence,” said UNICEF’s executive director Henrietta Fore.
Meanwhile, a Taliban assault on two adjacent checkpoints in northern Afghanistan late Tuesday killed at least 30 soldiers and policemen.
The attack took place in Baghlan province’s Baghlan-I Markazi district, said Mohammad Safdar Mohseni, head of the provincial council.
Dilawar Aymaq, a parliamentarian from Baghlan, said the attack targeted a military checkpoint and another manned by the so-called local police, militias recruited and paid by the Interior Ministry.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the assault.