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Dozens of young girls have been buried on a mountain top in Kabul after a secondary school was targeted for the bloodiest attack in Afghanistan in more than a year.
Some out-of-school explosions on Saturday killed more than 50 people during the holiday shopping season, mostly female students, and injured more than 100 in Dasht-e-Barchi, a western district of Kabul, mostly inhabited by Hazara Shia.
The government has blamed the Taliban for the massacre, but the armed group has denied responsibility and warned that the country must “take care and take care of education centers and institutions.”
Interior Ministry spokesman Tareq Arian told reporters that a car bomb exploded in front of the Sayed Al-Shuhada girls ’school on Saturday, and when students were terrified, two other devices exploded.
Neighbors were shopping before this week’s Eid al-Fitr holiday, which marks the end of Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
On Sunday, relatives began burying the dead on a hill known as the Martyrs ’Cemetery, where they mourn the victims of attacks on the Hazara community.
Saturday’s blast marks the 20th anniversary of the U.S. military’s continued withdrawal of its last 2,500 troops as it militarily intervened in the South Asian nation.
The Hazaras are historically Shiite Muslims who have historically suffered persecution in 38 million countries.
‘Bodies on top of each other’
The bodies in the wooden coffins were lowered one by one to the graves in a state of still shock and fear, the photographer for the AFP news agency said.
“I went on stage [after the blasts] and I found myself in the middle of my body, with my hands and head cut off and my bones broken, ”said Mohammad Taqi, a neighbor of Dasht-e-Barchi, whose two daughters were students at the school but escaped the attack.
“They were all girls. Their bodies were piled on top of each other. ‘
Mirza Hussain, a university student in the area, said last week that students at the school had complained about a lack of teachers and study materials.
“But what did they get [in return] it was a massacre. “
Victims ’books and school bags were still scattered at the scene of the attack.
Afghan officials, including President Ashraf Ghani, blamed the Taliban.
“This savage group does not have the capacity to fight the security forces of the war, and instead targets the public facilities and the girls’ school with savagery and savagery, ”Ghani said in a statement after the blasts.
The Taliban denied involvement and stressed that they had not carried out an attack in Kabul since February last year on peace talks with Washington and signed an agreement that paved the way for the withdrawal of other U.S. troops.
But the group has clashed daily with Afghan forces in the rugged countryside, even as the U.S. military has reduced its presence.
The Taliban leader has warned the US
The U.S. was supposed to pull out all its forces by May 1 last year in line with what it had agreed to with the Taliban, but Washington pushed back the date to Sept. 11 – a move that angered the Taliban.
The head of the group, Haibatullah Akhunzada, reiterated in a message released before Eid that any delay in withdrawing troops is a “violation” of that agreement.
“If America does not meet its commitments again, the world must be a witness and give all the consequences to America,” Akhunzada warned in a message on Sunday.
He also said the country should “take care and take care of education centers and institutions”.
U.S. Chief of Staff Ross Wilson Ross said Saturday’s blasts were “embarrassing.”
“The unforgivable attack on children is an attack on the future of Afghanistan that it cannot tolerate,” Wilson tweeted.
The Dasht-e-Barchi district has been the target of attacks by conventional armed groups.
In May last year, an armed group carried out a daytime light attack that left 24 dead at a nearby hospital, including the mother of 16 newborns.
On October 24, a suicide bomber blew himself up at a teaching center in the same neighborhood, killing 18 people in an attack claimed by the ISIL (ISIS) armed group.
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