Afghans bury their dead after dozens of girls killed in school blasts
Dozens of girls were buried on Sunday at a desolate hilltop cemetery in Kabul, a day after a secondary school was targeted in the bloodiest attack in Afghanistan in over a year.
A series of blasts outside the school during a peak holiday shopping period killed more than 50 people, mostly female students, and wounded more than 100 in Dasht-e-Barchi, a suburb of west Kabul populated mostly by Hazara Shias.
The government blamed the Taliban for the carnage, but the insurgents denied responsibility and issued a statement saying the nation needed to “safeguard and look after educational centres and institutions”.
Saturday’s blasts came as the US military continued the withdrawal of its last 2,500 troops from the violence-wracked country despite faltering peace efforts between the Taliban and Afghan government to end a decades-long war.
An interior ministry spokesman told reporters a car bomb detonated in front of the Sayed Al-Shuhada girls’ school, and when the students rushed out in panic, two more devices exploded. Residents were shopping before this week’s Eid al-Fitr holiday – which marks the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan – when the blasts occurred.
Mohammad Taqi, a resident of Dasht-e-Barchi, whose two daughters were students at the school but had escaped the attack, told AFP that after the blast: “I rushed to the scene and found myself in the middle of bodies. All of them were girls. Their bodies piled on top of each other.”
Another resident also described rushing to the school gate after he heard an explosion. “Countless girls were lying down on the street in blood, some were motionless and many more were screaming from injuries,” he said.
“I did not know what to do, where to start.”
On Sunday, relatives buried the dead at a hilltop site known as Martyrs Cemetery, where victims of attacks against the Hazara community are laid to rest. Hazaras are Shia Muslims and considered heretics by extremist Sunnis. Sunni Muslims make up the majority of the Afghan population.
“We buried 37 bodies in one cemetery alone - all were female students, many wearing their black and white school uniform,” said Sharif Watandoost, a member of a volunteer group helping families bury victims. “Some had shrapnel wounds, some were burned, many had been torn apart.
“People are devastated in this region. Everybody in the neighbourhood is in grief, they either lost their sister and daughter or a relative or have an injured girl at home. This catastrophe has shocked everybody.”
Last week, the school’s students had protested about a lack of teachers and study materials, said Mirza Hussain, a university student from the area. “But what they got [in return] was a massacre,” the photographer told AFP.
The Taliban denied involvement, and insisted they have not carried out attacks in Kabul since February last year, when they signed a deal with Washington that paved the way for peace talks and withdrawal of the remaining US troops.
But the group has clashed daily with Afghan forces in the rugged countryside even as the US military reduces its presence. The US was supposed to have pulled all forces out by 1 May as agreed with the Taliban, but Washington pushed back the date to 11 September – a move that angered the insurgents.
The United Nations agency Unicef condemned the attack on the school. “Violence in and around schools is never acceptable … Children must never be the target of violence,” it said, urging the country’s warring sides to protect human rights.
Ali Doosti, a college student who lives in west Kabul, spent Saturday going from hospital to hospital looking for a friend’s sister who had not returned from school.
“There were people coming to hospital after hospital, looking for their loved ones as dead bodies and injured girls were arriving in ambulances,” said Doosti, whose friend received a call in the evening to tell him that his sister had arrived safely at home.
“We, like others, were looking in the wounded people’s name lists. It was a horrendous situation. Everybody arriving was covered in blood … In one hospital, I saw a mother crying a lot. Her daughter was martyred and her sons already knew that but did not reveal it to the mother, though she could tell that her sons were hiding something. That scene hurt me a lot.”