KABUL: Dozens of young girls were being buried Sunday at a desolate hilltop cemetery in Kabul, a day after a secondary school was targeted in the bloodiest attack in Afghanistan in over a year.
A series of blasts outside the school during a peak holiday shopping period killed more than 50 people, mostly girl students, and wounded over 100 in Dasht-e-Barchi, a west Kabul suburb.
The death toll from a car bombing near a school in the western part of Kabul followed by two mine blasts has increased to more than 50 people, the Afghan Interior Ministry said on Sunday.
At least 100 more people were wounded in the bombing that took place on Saturday near a school in Dasht-e-Barchi, a Hazara-populated area of the Afghan capital, ministry spokesman Tariq Arian said.
Most of the victims were civilians, mainly students, who were leaving the school when the bombings happened.
The number of victims might still increase as ambulances were transferring wounded and dead people until late Saturday night, Arian added.
The bombing targeting students was widely condemned domestically and internationally.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack yet. The Taliban were quick to reject their involvement in the attack. However, the government has blamed the militant group. The IS is also active in the country.
Saturday's blasts came as the United States military continues to pull out its last 2,500 troops from the violence-wracked country despite faltering peace efforts between the Taliban and Afghan government to end a decades-long war.
Interior Ministry spokesman Tareq Arian told reporters that a car bomb detonated in front of the Sayed Al Shuhada girls school on Saturday, and when the students rushed out in panic, two more devices exploded.
Residents were shopping ahead of this week's Eid al Fitr holiday, which marks the end of Ramadhan, when the blasts occurred.
On Sunday, relatives began burying the dead at a hilltop site known as "Martyrs Cemetery", where victims of attacks against the Hazara community are laid to rest.
Bodies in wooden coffins were lowered in the graves one by one by mourners still in a state of shock and fear, an AFP photographer said.
"I rushed to the scene (after the blasts) and found myself in the middle of bodies, their hands and heads cut off and bones smashed," said Mohammad Taqi, a resident of Dasht-e-Barchi, whose two daughters were students at the school but had escaped the attack.
"All of them were girls. Their bodies piled on top of each other."
Last week the school's students had protested a lack of teachers and study materials, said Mirza Hussain, a university student from the area. "But what they got (in return) was a massacre."
Books and school bags belonging to the victims still lay scattered at the site of the attack. Afghan officials including President Ashraf Ghani blamed the Taliban.
This savage group does not have the power to confront security forces on the battlefield, and instead targets with brutality and barbarism public facilities and the girls' school," Ghani said in a statement after the blasts.
The Taliban denied involvement and insist they have not carried out attacks in Kabul since February last year, when they signed a deal with Washington that paved the way for peace talks and withdrawal of the remaining US troops.
But the group has clashed daily with Afghan forces in the rugged countryside even as the US military reduces its presence. - dpa/AFP
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