More than 100 students, most of them from the Hazara minority, demonstrated yesterday in the western Afghan city of Herat to condemn the attack that killed at least 35 people, including 20 young women, in Kabul on Friday.
On Sunday, young women chanted: “Education is our right! Genocide is a crime!” As they walked from Herat University to the governorate’s headquarters, the girls, who denounced Friday’s attack on the Hazaras, were stopped by heavily armed Taliban before reaching their destination.
On Friday, a suicide bomber blew himself up at an education center in Kabul as hundreds of students were taking university entrance exams, killing at least 35 people, including 20 women, and injuring 82 others, according to a United Nations mission in Afghanistan.
Neither side has claimed responsibility for the attack, but ISIL-Khorasan has claimed responsibility in the past for several attacks against Hazaras, whom the organization considers heretics and opposes the education of girls.
The Taliban also consider the Hazara minority to be pagans, and human rights groups have long accused them of persecuting them.
