Roadblocks that had been set up overnight to prevent the marchers accessing the city center or the presidential palace hampered efforts to transfer some of the wounded to hospitals, witnesses said.
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An Amnesty report in May said the number of internally displaced Afghans has reached 1.2 million.
The attack succeeded despite tight security which saw much of the city centre sealed off with stacks of shipping containers and other obstacles and helicopters patrolling overhead.
As tempers flared at the government, protesters also pushed away antiriot police forces who had provided security earlier in the day.
President Ashraf Ghani vowed in a televised speech to bring the perpetrators to justice.
Two suicide bombers had attempted to target the demonstrators, who were gathering in Demazang Square as their four-hour protest march wound down and they were setting up a camp, Haroon Chakhansuri said.
“Abu Ali, an Islamic State commander in Achin district of Nangarhar (an eastern Afghan province), reported to his commanders that three suicide bombers penetrated the demonstration in Dehmazang”, an Afghan intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said.
Daud Naji, a member of the Enlighten Movement which organized the marches, said on Sunday that they had been told only that there was a “heightened risk” of attack and had subsequently cancelled nine of 10 planned routes.
“This heinous attack was made all the more despicable by the fact that it targeted a peaceful demonstration”, the White House said in a statement.
Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated his “readiness for a most active cooperation with Afghanistan’s authorities and people in the fight against all forms of terrorism”, a Kremlin statement said.
The two suicide bombers have been identified as Najibullah Al-Afghani and Talhat Al-Afghan, according to the caption of the photographs. The U.S embassy in Kabul also issued a condemnation.
The attack, described by the top UN official in Afghanistan as a “war crime”, drew condemnation and offers of support from countries including Russian Federation and the United States.
Senior Hazara leaders were absent, despite having attended a similar protest in May.
The protesters were demanding that the construction of an electrical transmission line from Turkmenistan to Pakistan via Kabul be rerouted through their province of Bamyan, which is not now connected to Afghanistan’s central electricity grid. The original plan routed the line through Bamiyan province, in the central highlands, where most of the country’s Hazaras live, according to the AP.
The previous Afghan government changed the route in 2013.
As well as the more than 80 dead, some 230 people were injured.
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Hazaras account for about 15 percent of Afghanistan’s population, estimated at around 30 million, and often complain of discrimination.
