Female protesters demand more security after Afghan bombing

A group of Afghan women Saturday protested a suicide bombing that killed or wounded dozens of students in a Shiite education center in the capital a day earlier, demanding better security from the Taliban-run government.

The demonstration was quickly broken up by Taliban police.

The bomber on Friday struck an education center packed with hundreds of students in a Shiite Muslim neighborhood, killing 19 people and wounding 27. Among the casualties were teenagers, boys and girls, taking university practice entrance exams, a Taliban spokesman said.

The morning explosion at the Kaaj education center took place in Kabul’s Dasht-e-Barchi neighborhood, an area populated mostly by ethnic Hazaras, who belong to Afghanistan’s minority Shiite community. The Islamic State group has carried out repeated, horrific attacks on schools, hospitals and mosques in Dasht-e-Barchi and other Shiite areas in recent years.

About 20 protesters gathered Saturday in the Dasht-e-Barchi area for about 45 minutes before the rally was broken up by Taliban security forces. The protesters carried banners saying “Stop Hazar Genocide” in English and Dari.

“We are asking the Taliban government, when they claim that they have brought security, how they cannot stop an attacker from entering an educational center to target female students. In this incident, one family has lost four members. Why is it still happening?” demonstrator Fatima Mohammadi said.

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Staff at the Kaaj education center spent Saturday cleaning up the wreckage caused by the attack, while victims’ family members searched through items covered with blood belonging to their loved ones.

Hussain, who goes by one name, witnessed the attack. He said he believed the death toll was significantly higher, based on the large number of bodies he saw.

“First the attacker just over there, where a huge crowd of students was standing, opened fire. At least 40 people were killed there,” he said.

Zahra, a student who survived the attack, was unharmed because she went out just minutes before to buy a pen. She said she lost her friends in the attack and also her hope for a better future.

“I am not even sure if there is a future for us anymore or not,” she said.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack. Islamic State — the chief rival of the Taliban, which has ruled Afghanistan since August 2021 — has targeted the Hazara community in Dasht-e-Barchi and elsewhere in a brutal campaign of violence. Militants carried out a 2020 attack on a maternity hospital in Dasht-e-Barchi that killed 24 people, including newborns and mothers.