KABUL: More than 16 people were killed 57 injured in a suicide bombing attack at an education centre in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul on Saturday.
Health Ministry spokesman Saeed Jami said 17 bodies had been recovered and 57 injured people transported by ambulance to hospitals. Casualties could rise, he added.
A Ministry of Interior spokesman, Tariq Arian, cited security guards as identifying a bomber who detonated explosives in the street outside the Kawsar-e Danish educational centre.
A Taliban spokesman denied responsibility for the attack, which came at a sensitive time as teams for the insurgents and government meet in Qatar to seek a peace deal even as violence rises and the United States withdraws troops.
The suicide attack, which also wounded 57, happened late afternoon at the centre, which offers training and courses for students in higher education in a western district of Kabul.
The attack came in an area of west Kabul that is home to many from the Shia community, a minority in Afghanistan targeted by groups such as Islamic State in the past.
#AFG Most of the victims were from some of the most impoverished&remote communities in Daykundi, Ghor, Bamian& Wardak . They came to Kabul to study and look for a brighter future. Victims of today’s attack very young, 18, 20 and 25 years old. Dreams shattered. Futures ruined. pic.twitter.com/XThh4n7B3A
— BILAL SARWARY (@bsarwary) October 24, 2020
In the same area of Kabul, dozens of students died in an attack on another education centre in 2018, while in May gunmen attacked a maternity ward, killing 24, including mothers and babies.
