At least 35 people were killed in the suicide bombing that took place on Friday at a student training center in Kabul, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Manua) told the AFP news agency on Saturday.
“The latest evaluation of the attack shows at least 35 dead and 82 injured,” said Manua. On Friday morning, a man blew himself up at a training center that prepares students in a neighborhood of the Hazara Shia minority in Afghanistan.
The latest report released by Afghan police on Friday evening reported 20 dead and 27 injured.
According to a schoolboy who was on site at the time of the blast and was interviewed by AFP, “Most of the victims are girls.”
“Only a 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,” explained another student, Ali Irfani.
The blast occurred in the Dasht-e-Barchi district of western Kabul, a predominantly Shia Muslim area inhabited by the Hazara minority.
Dasht-e-Barchi has been hit hard in recent years and since the Taliban returned to power in August 2021. Several attacks have been alleged by ISIS, the regional branch of Islamic State, which views the Hazaras as heretics.
On Saturday morning, about 50 young women took part in a demonstration in the neighborhood, chanting the raised point “Stop the Hazara Genocide” and carrying signs that read “It is not a crime to be Shia”. The large number of Taliban stationed in the area fired several times in an attempt to disperse them, AFP journalists noted.