[Breaking news update, 9:18 a.m.]
ISIS’ media wing, Amaq, says two ISIS fighters detonated their suicide belts among a Shiite gathering in Kabul, Afghanistan. The statement has been reposted online by ISIS supporters.
[Previous story, published at 9:14 a.m.]
An explosion Saturday killed dozens of people and wounded more than 100 during a peaceful demonstration in Kabul by a minority group, witnesses told CNN.
“I saw tens of people laying down in blood around me and hundreds of people running away from the scene,” said Fatima Faizi, an Afghan freelance journalist.
Emergency, an Italian medical organization that assists in war-torn countries, tweeted that its hospital had received four victims and that there were “many wounded and killed.”
So far 31 bodies and more than 160 wounded people were taken to hospitals in Kabul, according to Ismail Kawoosi, a spokesman for the Afghan Health Ministry
The blast in Kabul on Saturday afternoon happened during a demonstration by the Hazara minority near the Afghan Parliament building and Kabul University.
The group was demanding a large power project that could potentially ensure a power supply through their home Bamyan province, a relatively isolated area west of Kabul.
Saturday’s attack is the latest in a rash of kidnappings and bombings in Kabul, which have heightened security fears in the nation’s capital.
No immediate claim of responsibility was made for the explosion. The Taliban claimed responsibility for recent attacks and have been accused of targeting the Hazara, a Persian-speaking people who mainly live in central Afghanistan and follow the Shia branch of Islam, but denied being behind Saturday’s explosion, in a statement from Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid.
Three weeks ago, two Taliban suicide bombers killed 34 people when they attacked a convoy of buses carrying newly graduated police officers in Kabul.
On June 20 in the Afghan capital, a suicide bomber killed 14 Nepali security contractors who worked for the Canadian embassy.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for that attack in a text message sent to media organizations.
U.S. and other diplomats were barred from traveling by road the short distance from the city’s international airport to their diplomatic missions. Instead, they are ferried by helicopter.
Meanwhile, the 14-year war against the Taliban in the countryside is as bloody as ever.
The Hazara in the past have demanded the government protect them from attacks that they have tied to the Sunni Taliban and ISIS.
Accounting for up to one-fifth of Afghanistan’s population, Hazaras have long been branded outsiders for their Shiite faith and far Asian features and targeted by the Taliban, according to a 2008 National Georgraphic article.
On November 11, thousands of protesters marched through Kabul with coffins containing the decapitated bodies of seven Shiite Hazaras, four men, two women and one child. The protesters demand justice for the beheadings, chanting slogans seeking death for the Taliban and ISIS.