Kabul school struck by suicide bombing

Taliban authorities reported on Friday that at least 19 people had been killed and 27 others injured in a suicide attack on an education center in Kabul, Afghanistan.

The blast went off when the Kaaj school in Kabul’s 13th district was preparing for entrance exams, city police spokesman Abdul Nafy Takor tweeted. He described the death toll as preliminary.

“Our teams have dispatched at the site of the blast to find out more details,” the Taliban-appointed official told the media.

Afghanistan’s TOLO News outlet said the attack happened at around 7:30 am local time. It’s report described ambulances taking victims to hospitals

Footage purportedly shot at the school, which was shared on social media, showed bloodied bodies covered by sheets and distraught people at the scene.

The facility is in Kabul’s Dashti Barchi neighborhood, where members of the Shiite Hazara minority live, AFP reported. They have been persecuted and targeted for years, including by bombing attacks.

While no group immediately claimed responsibility for the latest bombing, the terrorist organization, Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) has launched multiple such attacks in the past.

The Taliban and IS are hostile towards each other. Their fighting has been a major cause of violence in Afghanistan since the Taliban retook control of the country last year, following a decades-long guerilla war against a US-backed government in Kabul.