A suicide attack against a training center for students in the capital took place in a neighborhood where the minority Hazara community lives.
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L’A suicide attack committed Friday in a training center for students in Kabul left at least 35 dead, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Manua) told AFP on Saturday. “The latest assessment of the attack shows at least 35 dead and 82 injured,” Manua said. Friday morning a man blew himself up in a training center, preparing students for their exams, located in a neighborhood home to Afghanistan’s Shiite Hazara minority.
The latest report released Friday evening by the Afghan police had reported 20 dead and 27 injured. According to a student on site at the time of the explosion, interviewed by AFP, “most of the victims are girls”. “Few boys were hit because they were at the back of the class and the suicide bomber entered through the front door where the girls were sitting,” another student, Ali Irfani, said.
Demonstration
The explosion occurred in the Dasht-e-Barchi neighborhood in western Kabul, a predominantly Shia Muslim area where the Hazara minority live. Dasht-e-Barchi has been heavily hit in recent years and since the Taliban returned to power in August 2021. Several attacks have been claimed by ISIS, the regional branch of ISIS, which considers the Hazaras to be heretics. On Saturday morning, about 50 young women took part in a demonstration in this neighborhood shouting with raised fists “Stop the genocide of the Hazaras” and carrying signs on which one could read “It is not a crime to be Shia”. . The very many Taliban deployed on the spot fired in the air several times to try to disperse them, noted AFP journalists.
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