The toll of an attack on an educational center in Kabul on Friday has risen to 35 dead and 82 wounded, the UN mission in Afghanistan announced on Friday.
The attack was carried out by a suicide bomber and killed students preparing for exams.
“The latest count of the attack is at least 35 dead and 82 wounded.“said the UN Assistance mission in Afghanistan (Manua), quoted by the French news agency AFP.
The previous figure, published by the Afghan police on Friday night, was 20 dead and 27 wounded.
The attack killed mainly girls, a student who was at the scene at the time of the explosion told AFP.
“Few children were affected because they were in the back of the classroom and the attacker came through the front door where the girls were sitting,” the source said.
The explosion took place in the Dasht-e-Barchi district of western Kabul, an area predominantly Shia Muslim where the Hazara minority lives, of Turkish and Mongolian origin.
This neighborhood has been hit by attacks in recent years, and since the Taliban returned to power in August 2021.
Afghanistan. Car bomb kills seven near Kabul mosque
A regional branch of the Islamic State terror group has claimed responsibility for several attacks against Hazaras, whom they consider to be heretics.
Some 50 young women demonstrated in the Dasht-e-Barchi neighborhood in the morning, chanting “stop the genocide of the Hazaras,” according to AFP.
The demonstrators carried signs with phrases such as “It is not a crime to be Shia“, before Taliban guards fired into the air to end the protest.
The population of Afghanistan is majority Sunni.
The attack was condemned by UN Secretary General António Guterres, who called on the Taliban regime to protect the rights of all people, “regardless of their ethnicity or gender.”
Source: Observadora
