UN raises death toll in Kabul Hazara school attack to 43

The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Unama) on Monday raised the death toll to 43 and the number of wounded to 83 in the suicide attack perpetrated last Friday at an educational center in Kabul.

The school is located in an area where mainly members of the discriminated Shia Hazara community reside.

Unama has reported in a statement: "Most of the victims are girls and young women."

And he warned that "it is likely" that these numbers will continue to rise.

The attack took place in an educational center located in the Hazara neighborhood of Dasht-e-Barchi, when a suicide bomber detonated the explosives he was carrying inside a classroom in which hundreds of students of both sexes were taking part in a practice exam. for university entrance exams.

The attacker attacked in the area occupied by the students, according to what witnesses told Efe.

At the moment, no one has claimed responsibility for the attack.

The majority of the inhabitants of the area of ​​the Afghan capital where the explosion took place, the neighborhood of Dasht-e-Barchi, are Hazaras, a mainly Shiite ethnic minority, a regular target of attacks perpetrated by the Islamic State and other jihadist groups. , who consider them, like the rest of the Shiites, apostates.

In addition to professing this minority branch of Islam, members of this ethnic group suffer discrimination due to their physical features, since they are of Mongolian origin.

The Hazara are the third minority in the country, behind the Pashtuns and the Takiyos, and make up about 10% of the Afghan population.

The Taliban have refused to officially reopen secondary schools for girls over the age of 12 in most of the country, but in cities like Kabul, some teenage girls have continued to attend academies and private centers like the one targeted in this attack. Friday.

In some regions with a non-Pashtun majority – the ethnic group to which most of the members of the former guerrilla now in power belong – some women's institutes are still open.

Dozens of women took to the streets of Kabul this Saturday to protest against attacks on the minority Shiite Hazara.

And despite the fact that the interim government of the Taliban described last Friday's attack as "great horror", the protesters accused the Taliban of dispersing the protest with gunshots in the air and violence.

The fundamentalists also yesterday dissolved similar congregations in the cities of Herat (west) and Bamiyan (center).

Dozens of students, mainly women, protested in these cities against the attacks while demanding that the Taliban end the ban on female secondary education in the Asian country.

Since taking power in Afghanistan in August 2021, the Taliban have emphasized that the country is safer, but in recent months there have been attacks on mosques and civilian areas.

The attacks against students of the Hazara minority have also been repeated in recent years in the country.

The last one, which occurred last April, caused at least six deaths and 25 injuries, although the Taliban's control of the information prevented a clear figure from being obtained – some witnesses offered a higher number of victims.

In May 2021, an attack on a girls' school in the Dasht-e-Barchi neighborhood left 110 dead, mostly girls, and 290 injured.

Months earlier, another attack in October 2020 against an educational center for this minority caused 24 deaths and 57 injuries.

Follow all the international information on