Bombing kills 81 attending Kabul protest

Attack on Afghan Hazaras claimed by ISIS militants

An injured man gets treatment Saturday inside an ambulance on a Kabul street.
An injured man gets treatment Saturday inside an ambulance on a Kabul street.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A suicide bomber in Kabul detonated his explosives in a large crowd of demonstrators Saturday, killing 81 people and wounding 231, officials and witnesses said.

photo

AP

Thousands of demonstrators march toward the center of Kabul, Afghanistan, on Saturday before a suicide bombing that left dozens dead and hundreds wounded. The Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility for the attack.

The Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility for the bombing, marking the first time the extremists have struck the Afghan capital.

The attack targeted a demonstration by members of Afghanistan's Hazara ethnic community, who were pushing for a major regional power line to be routed through their home province. The Hazaras are Shiite Muslims; Islamic State militants, as well as most Afghans, are Sunnis.

Footage on Afghan television and photographs posted on social media showed numerous bodies spread across the square. Bloodied survivors were seen being dragged clear, while others walked around dazed or screaming.

Two suicide bombers had attempted to target the demonstrators, but one of them was shot by police before he could detonate his explosives, according to Haroon Chakhansuri, a spokesman for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. Chakhansuri said three city district police chiefs were injured and three security personnel were killed.

Witnesses said that immediately after the blast, security forces shot in the air to disperse the crowd. Secondary attacks have been known to target people who go to the aid of those wounded in a first explosion.

Roadblocks that had been set up overnight to prevent the marchers from accessing the city center or the presidential palace hampered efforts to transfer some of the wounded to the hospital, witnesses said.

Angry demonstrators sealed part of the area around the square and prevented police and other security forces from entering. Some threw stones at security forces.

Outside hospitals, long lines formed as members of the public offered to donate blood.

The Afghan Interior Ministry said 81 people had been killed and 231 wounded in the bombing. The ministry's deputy spokesman, Najib Danish, said the blast was the biggest in Afghanistan since 2001, when the Taliban launched their insurgency after they were toppled by the 2001 U.S. invasion.

According to Chakhansuri, the organizers of the march had been warned of the possibility of an attack.

"We had intelligence over recent days, and it was shared with the demonstration organizers. We shared our concerns because we knew that terrorists wanted to bring sectarianism to our community," he said.

Senior Hazara leaders attended a similar protest in May, but they were absent from Saturday's march.

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement issued by its news agency, Aamaq.

ISIS in Afghanistan

The Islamic State has had a presence on Afghanistan's eastern border with Pakistan, mainly in Nangarhar province, for the past year, but Saturday's attack was the first time the extremist group has struck the Afghan capital. The bombing raises concerns over the Islamic State's growing capabilities in Afghanistan.

Officials believe the fighters are made up of disaffected Taliban insurgents and members of Pakistani militant groups and that they receive some funding and arms from the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. In Nangarhar province, they have fought Taliban fighters as well as Afghan security forces, sometimes seizing control of whole districts in the eastern part of the province.

Amnesty International said in a statement that Saturday's "horrific attack" was a reminder that the conflict in Afghanistan "is not winding down, as some believe, but escalating, with consequences for the human rights situation in the country that should alarm us all."

A surge in the number of attacks worldwide that are linked to the Islamic State has been seen as an attempt to distract from a string of battlefield losses suffered by the extremists in Syria and Iraq, where the borders of their self-declared caliphate are shrinking. During the holy month of Ramadan -- which ended at the start of July -- a series of attacks, most linked to the Islamic State, killed nearly 350 people in eight countries.

Ghani has announced an upcoming military offensive in Nangarhar province, expected to start within days, aimed at eliminating the Islamic State from the country.

The Taliban denied they had any connection with the attack. A spokesman for the Sunni Muslim group called the bombing "an ominous plot aimed at creating discord among the nation." During the late 1990s, when the Taliban regime held power in Kabul and most of the country, it banned public displays for Shiite religious holidays.

Ghani declared today a day of national mourning. He ordered that a commission be set up to investigate the bombing and described the attack as a clear effort to divide Shiites and Sunnis.

The Interior Ministry issued a ban on "any kind of public gathering and demonstration" for the next 10 days.

The second-most deadly attack to hit Kabul since 2001 also targeted Shiites and was seen as an attempt to stoke sectarian violence. In 2011, a suicide bomber killed 70 people in an attack on worshippers marking Ashura, when Shiites commemorate the death of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson. That attack was linked to a Pakistani militant group.

The commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, U.S. Army Gen. John Nicholson, denounced the attack. He said in a statement that "we strongly condemn the actions of Afghanistan's enemies of peace and remain firmly committed to supporting our Afghan partners and the National Unity Government." The U.S. Embassy in Kabul also issued a condemnation.

In Washington, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the "heinous attack was made all the more despicable by the fact that it targeted a peaceful demonstration." He said the U.S. and the international community stand firmly with the Afghan people and their government "to confront the forces that threaten Afghanistan's security, stability and prosperity."

The head of the United Nations assistance mission in Afghanistan, Tadamichi Yamamoto, called the attack a "war crime" because it had specifically targeted a large number of civilians. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called it a "despicable crime" that "targeted citizens peacefully exercising their fundamental human rights."

The Hazaras' demonstration was the second to take place over the electric power line.

The so-called TUTAP power line is backed by the Asian Development Bank with involvement of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The original plan routed the line through the Hazara heartland of Bamiyan province but was changed in 2013 by the previous Afghan government.

Leaders of the marches have said that the rerouting was evidence of bias against the Hazara community, which accounts for up to 15 percent of Afghanistan's estimated population of 30 million. They are considered the poorest of the country's ethnic groups, and they say they suffer pervasive discrimination.

The attack put further pressure on Ghani's struggling government. Even as it tries to build momentum, his coalition administration has struggled with infighting and deadlines to hold parliamentary elections. The protest over the electricity transmission line has only added to the administration's woes.

"The government stacks containers for its own protection but cannot provide security to its citizens even when they have multiple security cameras," said Ahmad Behzad, a protest organizer, pointing to surveillance balloons in the Kabul sky.

Hundreds of protesters returned to the site after the attack, cordoning off the area with an Afghan flag they had carried in their march, lowering the cordon only to allow ambulances to pass. When the armored vehicle of a government official approached, men chased it away. As tempers flared, protesters also pushed away anti-riot police forces who had provided security earlier in the day.

Later in the evening, protest leaders argued around a candlelight vigil over whether to bury the dead or display their coffins at a protest in the coming days. The flag, laid on the ground by then, became the surface of a display for objects left behind: women's sneakers, notebooks, backpacks and articles of clothing.

Information for this article was contributed by Lynne O'Donnell and Karim Sharifi of The Associated Press; by Mujib Mashal and Zahra Nader of The New York Times; and by Sayed Salahuddin and Pamela Constable of The Washington Post.

A Section on 07/24/2016

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