At least six killed in an attack in Kabul against Shia students | International

At least six people have died and another 15 have been injured this Tuesday after the attack with explosives in an educational center of the Shiite Hazara minority in Kabul. The attack was recorded at the Abdulrahim Shahid Institute, located west of the city, according to the capital's police spokesman, Khalid Zadran. "There is no exact information on the number of victims, but unfortunately at least six deaths and more than 15 injuries have been confirmed," Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul Nafi Takor told Efe, warning that there could be more deaths.

Khalil, a witness to the school attack, put the number of victims at least 8 dead and more than 40 wounded. The man explained to Efe that one of the explosions occurred inside the institute and the other occurred on the outskirts, on the student access road. According to information collected by the Afghan television network Tolo TV, the explosions occurred when students were leaving classes. The Ministry of the Interior confirmed the event and stressed that it has opened an investigation to clarify the incident.

The Italian NGO Emergency, which has one of the main hospitals in Kabul, reported on Twitter that they received at least seven injured young people. Several journalists denounced on social networks that the Taliban prohibited them from accessing the place of the attacks, from where images of the dead bodies of at least four young people were shared in a narrow alley. Although the attacks have not yet been claimed, everything seems to point to the jihadist group Islamic State (IS), which usually claims this type of attack against the Hazara, whom it considers heretics.

The school is located in the Dasht-e-Barchi neighborhood, in Police District 18 of Kabul, and has a majority of Hazara inhabitants, an ethnic minority that has already suffered several attacks by the jihadist group. In addition, they have been the target of attacks by the Taliban, who have held power in the country since August last year, and who have repeatedly denied various accusations of discrimination and abuse against this minority.

The explosions come after days of great turmoil in the country due to air strikes last Friday against two provinces, which left 48 dead. The bombings were confirmed by the Taliban government in the southeastern province of Khost and in the northeastern province of Kunar. These attacks were carried out by the Pakistan Army and provoked demonstrations by dozens of people this Monday in Kandahar province.

Pakistan's bombardments against Afghan border areas occur with some frequency, because the Pakistani Army maintains that groups of insurgents opposed to Islamabad settle there. Both Afghanistan and Pakistan have been accusing each other for years of allowing fighters to cross the border. In fact, before the Taliban came to power on August 15, clashes between the forces of both countries were relatively frequent along the Durand Line, as the border created after an agreement between the British and Kabul in the 19th century.

Follow all the international information in Facebook Y Twitteror in our weekly newsletter.