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At least 80 people have been killed and hundreds injured after two suicide bombers struck a peaceful protest in Kabul by a Shia minority group.
Responsibility for the attack, which appears to have targeted a demonstration by the Hazara minority, was claimed by Islamic State via the group’s news agency, Amaq. If true, it would mark the first attack by Isis in Kabul, and its largest ever in Afghanistan.
Crowds gather on the street in Kabul, Afghanistan for a massive anti-government protest.
Hazara people march on Kabul in power line protest
The attack, the deadliest in Kabul since 2001, has raised fears of an intensification in sectarian conflict. Since Afghanistan’s civil war in the 1990s the country has largely been spared the sectarian violence that plagues neighbouring Pakistan, as well as Iraq and Syria, where Isis has deliberately tried to stoke ethnic tensions.
Hazaras have historically suffered discrimination and persecution. The protesters were marching against government plans for a major power project to bypass Bamiyan, a predominantly Hazara province in the central highlands. Following similar protests in May, Afghanistan’s president, Ashraf Ghani, established a commission to look into the issue but government attempts to find a compromise failed. On 19 June, a contract was signed to build a smaller electricity line through Bamiyan, which did not placate Hazara activists.
In the hours after the attack, details of casualties were unclear, but some security forces seemed to have been among the killed. As people were frantically calling friends present at the protests, calls went out on social media for blood donations to the city’s poorly resourced hospitals. “I was standing by the side of the crowd, behind an ice cream truck,” said one protester, Aman Turkmani. When the blast happened, “first the ice cream cart exploded, then he exploded. The sound of the explosion was very strong,” he said.
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