At least six people died and 11 were injured on Tuesday in two explosions at a boys’ school in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. The attack took place in a neighborhood with a majority population of members of the Shia Hazara community, a group that has been marginalized and persecuted for years in the mostly Sunni country.
Two homemade bombs exploded outside the Abdul Rahim Shahid school in the Dasht-e-Barshi district, west of the Afghan capital. The number of dead and wounded was announced by Kabul police. A third explosion took place at an English school in the same neighborhood, police said.
The explosions happened just as the children were leaving classes, according to a witness. Images posted on social media show bodies at the entrance to the school, burnt books and backpacks scattered across the street. The wounded were taken to hospitals, and the Taliban prevented the journalists from approaching.
The number of such attacks in Afghanistan has fallen since the Taliban took power in August last year, with the complete withdrawal of US troops after 20 years of occupation in the country.
Most of the attacks carried out in recent months were claimed by the Islamic State Khorasan group (EI Khorasan), the Afghan arm of the organization considered to be a terrorist that has become famous in Iraq and Syria. The Taliban say they have defeated the group, but analysts believe that IS Khorasan remains the biggest threat to the current government of Afghanistan.
The Dasht-e-Barshi neighborhood has already been the target of several attacks claimed by IS Khorasan, which considers the Hazaras to be heretics.
In May 2021, several explosions were recorded in front of a girls’ school in the same neighborhood: 85 people died, mostly students, and more than 300 were injured. A first bomb exploded outside the school and then two more exploded as students tried to flee the school.
In October 2020, another attack on a high school left 24 dead in the same area. In May 2020, in the same neighborhood, gunmen attacked a maternity hospital run by the NGO Doctors Without Borders and killed 25 people, including 16 women, some of them in labor. IS Khorasan is suspected of carrying out the three attacks.
For years, however, the Taliban themselves have also attacked Shi’ite Afghans from the Hazara community, which makes up between 10% and 20% of the country’s population of nearly 40 million.
