At least 42 children were injured in an explosion in Kabul’s Dasht-e-Barchi neighbourhood, an area largely inhabited by Afghanistan’s Hazara and Shia minority communities, officials and hospital authorities said.
The blast occurred on Monday evening in the western Kabul neighbourhood, which has previously been targeted by militant groups, including the Islamic State.
The Taliban-run Kabul police department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A Kabul hospital that treated at least 35 of the injured children said all the patients were aged between 10 and 14.
Dejan Panic, Afghanistan country director for EMERGENCY hospital, said all the injured had suffered shrapnel wounds, with at least three requiring surgery.
The location of the blast prompted concerns that the incident could have been a targeted attack. UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan Richard Bennett condemned the explosion as a “heinous attack”.
The European Union’s mission in Afghanistan also condemned the incident, saying deliberate attacks targeting children and educational institutions were unacceptable.
Dasht-e-Barchi, a densely populated area with a large Hazara population, has witnessed several deadly attacks in recent years, many of which have targeted civilians, students and members of the Shia community.
In May 2021, an attack on a school in the area killed at least 85 people and injured hundreds, with girls and women making up the majority of the victims.
In September 2022, a suicide bomber targeted a tutoring centre during a university entrance examination, killing at least 19 people, many of them teenage girls and young women.
