In the hours after the attack, details of casualties were unclear, but some security forces seemed to have been among the killed.
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Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Saturday condemned the “gruesome” terror attack on peaceful demonstrators in 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.
As thousands gathered in a city square, two suicide bombers targeted the demonstrators but one was shot by police before an explosive device could be detonated, the authorities said. “The Government of India stands ready to extend all possible assistance to the Government and people of Afghanistan”, he added.
“I promise you I will take revenge against the culprits”, Ghani said.
“I have ordered the attorney general to set up a commission to investigate this incident”.
The killers responsible for this bloodshed do not represent the future for Afghanistan and will not prevail.
Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry says the death toll in a suicide attack on a peaceful demonstration in Kabul has climbed to 80.
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. Most of the population is Sunni. That attack was claimed by a Pakistani Sunni extremist group called Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. The Taliban have been waging a vicious insurgency against the Kabul government for 15 years, since their regime was overthrown by the US invasion in 2001.
– March 18, 2015: Three militants attack the National Bardo Museum in the Tunisian capital, killing 22 people, mostly tourists.
The protests by a group whose leaders include members of the national unity government have put pressure on Ghani, who has faced growing opposition from both inside and outside the government.
The blast in Kabul on Saturday afternoon happened during a demonstration by the Hazara, a Shiite minority group, near the Afghan Parliament building and Kabul University.
The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for an explosion during a protest in Afghanistan, which killed at least 80 people and left at least 260 more injured.
He said the figure was likely to rise, “as the condition of numerous injured is very serious”. The Hazaras are largely Shiite Muslim and considered apostates by ISIS. He had no further details. The protesters were marching against government plans for a major power project to bypass Bamiyan, a predominantly Hazara province in the central highlands. The Enlightenment Movement wants the line to be routed through Bamiyan to Kabul, Tolo News reported.
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The Afghan government is now in the middle of an operation backed by North Atlantic Treaty Organisation airstrikes against IS in Nangarhar, after Ghani earlier this year claimed that the group had been defeated. Please see our terms of service for more information. AP material published by LongIsland.com, is done so with explicit permission. This includes the preparation of derivative works of, or the incorporation of such content into other works.
