Two suicide bombers had attempted to target the demonstrators, who were gathering in Kabul’s Demazang Square as their four-hour protest march wound down, Haroon Chakhansuri said.
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The attack is one of the deadliest in Afghanistan since the Taliban launched a violent insurgency in 2001.
The explicit reference to the Hazara’s Shi’ite religious affiliation also marked a menacing departure for Afghanistan, where the bloody sectarian rivalry between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims typical of Iraq has been relatively rare, despite decades of war.
Islamic State group claimed responsibility for twin explosions.
An Afghan intelligence source told the BBC that an IS commander named Abo Ali had sent three jihadists from the Achen district of Nangarhar province to carry out the Kabul attack.
The Persian-speaking Hazara, estimated to make up about 9 percent of the population, are Afghanistan’s third-largest minority but they have long suffered discrimination, and thousands were killed during the period of Taliban rule.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest says Saturday the “heinous” attack was made more “despicable” because it targeted people at a peaceful demonstration in Kabul.
“As a result of the attack 80 people were martyred and 231 others were wounded”, the interior ministry said in a statement. The worst previous attack against the Hazara was in December 2011, when more than 55 people were killed in Kabul during Ashura.
Spokesmen for ISIS quickly claimed responsibility for the attack at a traffic circle jammed with demonstrators, according to Afghan media.
President Ashraf Ghani vowed “revenge” against the perpetrators of the attack and announced Sunday as a national day of mourning. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Saturday condemned a terrorist attack in Afghan capital of Kabul that struck a peaceful demonstration, APA reports quoting Xinhua. “Afghanistan in fighting all forms of terrorism”, Russian news agencies quoted a Kremlin statement as saying.
Afghan authorities have closed off streets across the capital, Kabul, in preparation for a demonstration by ethnic Hazaras demanding a planned power line be rerouted through their poverty-stricken province. But the resentment felt by many Hazaras runs deeper than simple questions of energy supply.
Hundreds of Hazaras have reportedly fought alongside President Bashar al-Assad’s troops in Syria against Sunni groups, including the Islamic State, in recent years, making Hazaras a likely target for the group’s loyalists back in Afghanistan.
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The 500-kilovolt TUTAP power line, which would connect the Central Asian nations of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan with electricity-hungry Afghanistan and Pakistan, was originally set to pass through the central province.
