The number of people killed in the blast at Kabul’s Sayyid al-Shuhada school has risen to 85.
The death toll in a bomb attack that targeted schoolgirls in Kabul on Saturday has risen to 85, Afghan officials told News Agencies on Monday.
Another 147 people were wounded in the attack in front of the Sayed Al-Shuhada school, said Danish Hedayat, head of media for the second vice president of Afghanistan.
A car bomb was detonated in the neighborhood of Dasht-e-Barchi, and two more bombs exploded when students rushed out in panic.
There has been no official claim of responsibility yet. The Taliban has denied being behind Saturday evening’s blasts.
Conflict is raging in Afghanistan, with security forces in daily combat with the Taliban, who have waged war to overthrow the foreign-backed government since they were ousted from power in Kabul in 2001.
Although the United States did not meet a May 1 withdrawal deadline agreed in talks with the Taliban last year, its military pullout has begun, with President Joe Biden announcing that all troops will be gone by September 11.
But the foreign troop withdrawal has led to a surge in fighting between Afghan security forces and Taliban insurgents. Critics of the decision say the Islamist militants will make a grab for power and civilians live in fear of being subjected once more to brutal and oppressive Taliban rule.
The area where the blasts happened is home to a large community of Shiites from the Hazara ethnic minority, which has been targeted in the past by Islamic State, a Sunni militant group.
Officials said most of those killed were schoolgirls. Some families were still searching hospitals for their children on Sunday.
“The first blast was powerful and happened so close to the children that some of them could not be found,” an Afghan official, requesting anonymity, told Reuters.
On Sunday, civilians and policemen collected books and school bags strewn across a blood-stained road now busy with shoppers ahead of celebrations for Eid al-Fitr next week.
One witness told Reuters all but seven or eight of the victims were schoolgirls going home after finishing their studies.
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